MEC002 Final Flight
My heart sank this morning when I heard of the unexpected passing of my friend and fellow sim pilot, Todd Cox. No, actually, my heart stalled when I heard the news.
Todd was a gentleman if ever there was one. He was kind and always willing to help. He was very knowledgeable on many subjects, though always modest, almost minimizing his contributions.
I am honored to have been able to call Todd my friend and I sorely miss him, like so many of us.
I met Todd for the first time online in late 2015. Our virtual airline (Mirage Executive Charters) was going through a rough time as we were pretty much locked out of our own website. Todd sprang into action and with the help of Jerry and a few others, helped us create a brand new website and move our flight tracking system to a much more robust system (smartCARS). Over the years he continued to play a pivotal role in so many aspects of our virtual airline, from adding the ability to fly charter flights, to leading the effort of creating brand new liveries for our entire fleet.
We finally met in person in his neck of the woods at FlightSim Expo 2019 in Orlando. He drove there with his wife (“The Admiral”) and one of his daughters. I was certainly impressed by how many people he knew in the flight sim community and even more impressed by how many knew him! It was a pleasure and a lot of fun being around him.
My favorite memory with Todd has to be when he was able to join me in the A320 cockpit. He felt at home immediately and we really enjoyed flying as a two pilot crew. This was around the time of Mirage’s 10th anniversary, so I deemed appropriate to have some special peanut bags for our virtual passengers.
Another anecdote from that day had me leave the room before the first flight to do the preflight walkaround as any good first officer would do. Little did he know that I would come back with three actual A320 gear pins in hand. The smile on his face was priceless.
This is just one of the fond memories I’ll keep from the time I was lucky to spend with Todd.
Blue skies and tailwinds forever, my friend!
