NJ Pilot Leads Mission To Evacuate 823 People From Afghanistan

ANDOVER TOWNSHIP, NJ - A New Jersey Air Force pilot, who airlifted 823 people from Afghanistan on a C-17 evacuation aircraft, is being recognized for his part in the rescue mission.

A C-17 mission commander/pilot stationed at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey’s Burlington County for close to two decades, United States Air Force Lt. Colonel Eric Kut grew up in Andover Township, according to a post celebrating him on the Andover Township Fire Department’s social media, his parents Andre and Cathy Kut still residents.

The fire department said Kut grew up in Sussex County and was a student at Andover Preschool and Reverend George A Brown Memorial School in his earliest years. Kut was the captain of Pope John XXIII Regional High School’s football team, before he graduated there in 1998.

He graduated from The Citadel, South Carolina’s military college, in 2002, according to the post.

“On behalf of the ATFD and the residents of Andover Township, thank you for your service and be safe in your current mission orders,” the fire department wrote in its message. “We are all keeping you, all of our military forces and your family in our thoughts and prayers.”

Air Force Magazine reported on the evacuation mission as a record-breaking one for the C-17, with initial reports of the flight out with Afghan passengers having only been 643.

The crew of the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, with Kut as aircraft commander, didn’t initially include 183 children on the laps of adults in its headcount on the plane, as it left Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The C-17’s typical passenger headcount on most missions, Air Force Magazine reported, is approximately 300.

The previous record set, the publication stated, was 670 when the 535 Airlift Squadron evacuated people from the Philippines in 2012 after Super Typhoon Haiyan.

Fox News interviewed Kut, who confirmed his flight was not the one leaving Afghanistan while people were seen running on the runway.

Though Kut declined to share the passengers’ final destination with Fox News, he said he and his crew were there to “answer our nation’s call to deliver that freedom and that hope,” for the passengers he and his team were charged with transporting to a safe location.

Read more here in Air Force Magazine.

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