Instead of traveling from Sweden to celebrate their son’s wedding, they are here to mourn his death in the Saturday plane crash that killed 10 men.
In two weeks, Fahlstrom would have celebrated his 31st birthday with fiancee Jacqueline Oda of Oklahoma City.
“He had just bought the ring,” said Jean Simmons, who worked with Fahlstrom at Pennacle Flight Academy and known him since he started training, “It’s still at the jewelers.”
Fahlstrom had flown with pilot Denver Mills, another victim of the crash, many times and had flown for the OSU athletic department for a few months.
He had clocked a lot of time on planes similar to the one that crashed, said Hal Harris of Air One Inc. Fahlstrom could have piloted planes himself, Harris said, but he believes Fahlstrom was prevented by the Federal Aviation Administration’s insurance policies.
Harris had flown as co-pilot with Fahlstrom for about a year on a King Air 90, which is similar to the plane that crashed Saturday. He had been flying corporate planes for about 1 1/2 years.
Fahlstrom first trained at Business Air from 1996 to 1998 until it went out of business. He received his commercial pilot’s license at Pennacle Flight Academy. He was licensed for instrument rating, single-engine landing, multi-engine landing and flight instruction.
After getting his commercial pilot’s license, he worked as a flight instructor for Pennacle and as a freelance flight instructor for Wiley Post Airport.
Harris said Fahlstrom was “just a nice guy” and “very personable.”
Fahlstrom was from Kalmar, Sweden, where he had been in the navy for about three years. He was also a professional tennis player in Sweden. He moved to Oklahoma City in February 1996 to become a pilot.
“He was a really good guy,” said Denise Cotton, Fahlstrom’s co-worker at Wiley Post Airport. “He was always smiling, always happy.”
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