For retired Vance Air Force Base employee Mark Bruner, Friday morning, August 28, brought one more chance to say goodbye to an aircraft that had been a familiar part of his career.
Bruner retired from Vance AFB on December 31, 2025, but former co-workers and supervisors invited him back to sign the fuselage of the last T-1A Jayhawk to depart Vance.
Climbing onto the left wing, just as he had done countless times before, Bruner took a large black marker and left a message only his fellow T-1 maintainers could fully appreciate:
โNo more FMSโs – No more AMU 80%โs – No more broken knobs – See Ya!โ
The message was a lighthearted reference to some of the routine maintenance tasks that came with keeping the T-1 flying. In a fitting bit of timing, the aircraftโs AMU 80% light came on after engine start that morning. Bruner jokingly signaled to the pilots that he had already signed the aircraft, so they would have to take it as it was. The pilots smiled and waved as the roughly 20 people gathered for the departure laughed.
T-1s began flying at Vance in 1995. At its peak, the base had approximately 43 of the aircraft on its flight line. Vance was also once home to both the first and last T-1s produced, earning them the distinction of being the โAlpha and Omegaโ of the fleet.
On Friday, T-1A tail number 93-644 received its final sendoff. Chad Olsen, a 30-year T-1 mechanic and longtime co-worker and friend of Bruner, marshalled the aircraft out and gave it one final thumbs-up.
Maj. David Thomas and four other pilots then took the Jayhawk on its final journey from Vance to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, home of the aircraft storage facility commonly known as โThe Boneyard.โ
For decades, the T-1 Jayhawk helped train Air Force pilots preparing to fly airlift and tanker aircraft. With the Air Force transitioning to advanced simulator-based training, an era at Vance has now come to a close.
For the people who spent years maintaining, flying and working around the T-1, Friday was more than the departure of an airplane. It was goodbye to an old friend and a piece of Vance history. photos by Mark Bruner
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