Tustin native, 1st Lt. Sean McGaffigan is excited to do the opening day flyover of Angels Stadium today, April 7, with his friends, family and favorite ball club watching from below.

“I immediately volunteered for it when I saw it pop up,” McGaffigan, a member of the 729th Airlift Squadron at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, said of today’s C-17 flight. “Lucky for me, no senor guy volunteered.”

Interviewed Wednesday, he didn’t know yet if he would be the pilot in the hot seat, there are four in the cargo plane’s cockpit. Who would actually be at the controls isn’t made official until the day of the flyover.

McGaffingan said he grew up a huge Angels fan and was even briefly an Angel himself – playing for an Angels team in a Tustin city tournament when he was in sixth grade.

The 26-year-old, who was a varsity quarterback for Foothill High School in 2014 and whose favorite hobby is surfing, has spent his last two years in the Air Force’s pilot training pipeline, going through training in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

He joined the Air Force Reserves after graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2018 where he studied industrial engineering. His plan, he said, is to get enough flight hours so he can become a commercial pilot.

For the last six months, he’s been flying with the 729th Airlift Squadron around the world, ferrying equipment for the Air Force and the nation’s other military branches.

He’s been to Australia, Qatar, Spain, Germany, Iceland and the Falkland Islands.

Among some of his most recent memorable experiences, McGaffingan said, is flying Marine Corps gear to a NATO training exercise in Norway and delivering two Black Hawk helicopters to Croatia to help with that country’s growing defense capabilities and military preparedness in support of NATO.

“We landed there and the cool thing was to know how much of an impact you’re making,” McGaffigan said, adding that Croatia’s minister of defense and the Croatian press were there to greet them. “It was cool to be the new guy and be part of a team to make that happen.”

“Flying around with a couple helicopters in the back is wild,” he added.

If McGaffigan isn’t steering the plane today, he’ll still be plenty busy, he said. “I’ll be helping out with radios, talking to different airport towers to let them know we’re coming in, looking for other traffic in the sky and talking with our point of contact on the ground.”

And, if he even has a free minute, he might try to get a quick aerial view of his favorite Angel, Mike Trout.

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