Scholarship created in memory of pilot lost in air ambulance crash

A scholarship fund has been established in memory of Thomas Farquhar, a 23-year-old Canadian pilot presumed to have died with five others in an air ambulance crash off the Massachusetts coast. The Tommy Farquhar Aviation Scholarship Fund at Prairie College in Three Hills, Alberta, will help aspiring pilots who want to use flying to serve others.

Farquhar moved from Regina, Saskatchewan, to Alberta in 2021 to train at the Prairie Aviation Training Centre, completing the programme in 2023. He later became a first officer with Latitude Air Ambulance. He met his wife, Kayla, while they were both studying aviation at the college, which runs its flight training with Mission Aviation Fellowship Canada.

Dallas Derksen, director of the Prairie Aviation Training Centre, said Farquhar's enthusiasm for life was plain to those around him. The college noted his role in campus chapel services, his musical ability and his willingness to help others. College president and chief executive Mark Maxwell offered condolences to Farquhar's family and to his colleagues at Latitude Air Ambulance. The family set up the fund through the college.

Farquhar was first officer on a Gulfstream G100 flying as Heartbeat 104 on 3 October, when the aircraft went down during a medical transport operation between Bermuda and Boston. According to the Transportation Safety Board, the crew radioed that they were having electrical problems before the jet descended quickly and contact with air traffic control was lost south of Nantucket.

Searchers later found debris from the aircraft. The U.S. Coast Guard called off its search on 4 October. All six people on board — four crew members, a patient and a family escort — are presumed dead.