Luella Dooley-Menet is a former Army helicopter pilot and officer who served 13 years in the Army National Guard.

Luella’s first taste of aviation came when she was in grade school. A close family friend and dairy farmer, John Erickson, and his wife Lila would take Luella and her sister Jocelyn on flights in his Cessna 150 from his farm near Wilton to Bismarck for dinner at Pizza Hut. The thrill of taking the yoke while flying over the rolling prairie and dodging cow piles in the pasture “landing strip” planted the seed of aviation in her soul.

Luella began her military career in the North Dakota Army National Guard in 1999. She enlisted as a 77F, and her first assignment was as a refueler in the 1-112th Aviation Company out of Bismarck, where she refueled UH-1 Huey helicopters. One of the perks of the job was that she often got to ride along on training flights. When she wasn’t about to lose her lunch from motion sickness, these flights revived her love of aviation and prompted her to try to fly helicopters instead of refueling them.

Luella transferred to the Wisconsin Army National Guard when she moved to Milwaukee, WI, for graduate school. While there, she convinced an aviation company in the Wisconsin Guard that she was a good bet to send to flight school. She finished flight training in 2006 as a medical evacuation pilot and flew UH-1 Hueys and then UH-60 Blackhawks. 

Luella served on a number of natural disaster response missions within the U.S., including hurricane response and the 2008 floods in North Dakota’s Red River Valley. Her last assignment before leaving the Guard was as the commander of F Co. 2-238th Aviation in Kosovo for KFOR 15 in 2011-2012, where they provided MEDEVAC support to all U.S. and NATO forces in the area of operation. 

In 2013 Luella flew as part of the first all-female Blackhawk helicopter crew in the Wisconsin Army National Guard.

Today Luella is part owner and VP of Administration of Menet Aero, which manufactures tethered drones that are used by the military and telecommunications companies as variable height antennas.