Airman Spotlight--Maj. (Dr.) Anil Menon

  • Published
  • 173rd Fighter Wing
KINGSLEY FIELD, Ore. --  Maj. (Dr.) Anil Menon is a Citizen-Airman with a tremendous breadth of experience. He is residency trained and board certified in Emergency Medicine and Aerospace Medicine. He lives and works in Houston, Texas as an emergency room doctor and as a Flight Surgeon certified to work in Mission Control for NASA. There, Menon supports the International Space Station and travels to Russia to support launch and landing. In the last two years he has lived at the Gagarin Training Center near Moscow for six months. He travelled to Baikanour, Kazakhstan, four times for launches and landings. He also helped design the medical kit used for contingency operations.

Menon is a flight surgeon in the 173rd Medical Group and is a member of the Critical Care Air Transport Team (CCATT). He has deployed three times with CCATT, transporting critically wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to Germany.

After his most recent CCATT deployment in April 2015, he and his fiancée Anna flew to Bagdogra, India, to provide race support for an ultramarathon called Windchasers. Ten minutes after arriving at Bagdogra airport, they felt the airport shake. Those tremors were from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal causing more than 8,000 fatalities, 22,000 injuries. Menon and Anna made the decision to give up race support and venture to Kathmandu. After 24 hours of driving, they reached the outskirts of Kathmandu, found housing, and identified themselves to a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) providing relief to disaster victims. Menon organized the early medical response amongst other volunteers, and Anna worked on waste and sanitation.

Dr. Menon is no stranger to medical humanitarian missions. He was also a volunteer in the Haitian 2010 earthquake, providing desperately needed medical care to earthquake survivors in austere conditions.