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Losing Kawsara left his friend Mahd Obeid devastated. The two graduated from Lamar High School in Arlington together, Obeid, 26, said. They went on to attend aviation school and became pilots together.<\/p>\n
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Kawsara was young, but his goals and drive were beyond his years, Obeid said. He leaves behind a large family, including three brothers and three sisters.<\/p>\n
\u201cAli was a loving guy,\u201d\u00a0Obeid said. \u201cThere’s nobody I’ve ever met that is like Ali. Nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kawsara was in another crash in May 2024, Obeid said. Kawsara was flying at night when his aircraft’s single engine failed. The emergency landing was more difficult because it was hard to see at night,\u00a0Obeid said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod protected him, and luckily, he was able to make it out at that time,\u201d\u00a0Obeid said<\/p>\n
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Obeid said if he were in Kawsara\u2019s position, he would\u2019ve stopped flying after the first crash. But that wasn\u2019t the person Kawsara was.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was genuinely a miracle he made it out, but he kept going,\u201d\u00a0Obeid said. \u201cHe had faith. If he didn’t have faith, he would have not continued.”<\/p>\n
Kawsara became an airframe and power-plant mechanic, and also flew as a medical transport pilot.<\/p>\n
While flying across state lines,\u00a0Kawsara still had time to care for his community,\u00a0Obeid said. Kawsara helped teach the Quran to children at Al-Hedayah Mosque in Fort Worth and always cherished time with his family.<\/p>\n
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Obeid and Kawsara spent years flying thousands of hours together. Kawsara was sharp and flew his planes to the highest standard of safety, Obeid said.<\/p>\n
Their friendship grew to new heights as they soared through the sky together,\u00a0Obeid said. On nice days, they\u2019d take advantage of the freedom by flying to other parts of the state or Oklahoma and get tacos together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m truly going to miss these moments,\u201d\u00a0Obeid said. \u201cAs an aircraft owner, I honestly feel like I’m not going to have a purpose to fly because it’s going to be hard. Who am I going to go fly with? I was always flying with Ali.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Ali]()
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Ali Kawsara and Mahd Obeid sit in the front area of a King Air plane together in 2020. Kawsara died alongside three others while flying a King Air aircraft that crashed in Ruidoso, New Mexico on Thursday May 14, 2026.<\/p>\n
Mahd Obeid<\/p>\n
In 2020, Kawsara and Obeid sat inside a King Air plane for the first time. They were in awe, Obeid said. He learned that it was Kawsara\u2019s dream to fly a King Air one day.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe kept talking about it, even throughout his career,\u201d\u00a0Obeid said. \u201cAnd he flew it, but he didn’t just fly it for recreational purposes. He flew it with a purpose. He was out saving lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plane\u00a0Kawsara was flying the day he died was a King Air.<\/p>\n
The crew were on an assignment under Trans Aero\u00a0MedEvac, a critical-care air medical transport provider, according to the statement. Generation Jets is a longtime private aviation partner of Trans Aero MedEvac, the statement said. The plane was reported overdue after communications and radar contact were lost, according to Trans Aero\u00a0MedEvac.<\/p>\n
“Those we lost were more than coworkers. They were family, caregivers, aviators, teammates, and friends who dedicated their lives to serving others with compassion, professionalism, and courage,” Trans Aero\u00a0MedEvac and Generation Jets said in the joint statement.<\/p>\n
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The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash. The FAA has listed the crash as an accident \u201cunder unknown circumstances\u201d in its incident alerts.<\/p>\n
The crash sparked a wildfire in the forest of the Capitan Mountains. The fire had grown to 150 acres by Thursday night, the U.S. Forest Service of Lincoln National Forest said in a news release.<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday morning, the fire has grown to 16,443 acres, according to the New Mexico Energy, Mineral and Natural Resources Department.<\/p>\n
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Prior to Thursday’s crash, there were 25 fatal crashes of medical planes over the past 25 years that killed nearly 70 people, according to NTSB records.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"23-year-old Ali\u00a0Kawsara died alongside fellow pilot\u00a0Keelan Clark and Trans Aero\u00a0MedEvac flight nurses Sarah Clark and Jamie\u00a0Novick in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[732,27,29,28,88643],"class_list":["post-302176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-article","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-fort-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}