Dakota Chaney

I grew up in a rural county in Southern Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati. Growing up, I enjoyed hunting and fishing, along with helping my grandfather with the family farm where we raised cattle and horses. I was never around anything that involved aviation that much being in a rural community until I joined the local fire department, and we would fly patients out. From there, an idea turned into something that I wanted to do but struggled to figure out how. After joining the Ohio National Guard as a Combat Engineer, I was able to take the funding that they offered through the VA and go to school for that idea. In Fall of 2021, I started school at Southern Utah University where I did most of my ratings up to CFII and finish my bachelor’s degree. Once completing flight training, I started my first job flying tours in Tennessee and then later in the year came to HeloAir for patrol work and with the possibility of moving into other sorts of flying in the future!