AUSTIN (KXAN) – After more than 30 years as a fire chief and firefighter, Mike Wills was loving the second act of his career: working at Austin’s airport overseeing safety on the tarmac, his daughter Jillian Wills said.
“Every day, when he would come in on the radios, he’d be like, ‘It’s a great day in aviation. It’s a beautiful sunrise,’” Jillian recounted.
So, given her dad’s current position after a lifetime of work in dangerous jobs, the news Jillian received on Halloween day 2023 came as a shock. A fuel truck struck her dad at work on the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport tarmac. Despite lifesaving efforts by paramedics, he died on the pavement within an hour, according to incident reports and court records.
Jillian, who lives in California, later learned her dad’s death that morning was the second fatal incident that year in that area of the airport, which is more accurately called the apron. It’s a unique zone between the terminals and runway where planes, trucks, jet bridges and people all mix. Six months earlier, an American Airlines employee died after a roofless tug vehicle he was driving collided with a jet bridge.