Thursday, October 1, 2026
Now thousands of miles away in the Middle East, it was just three weeks ago that Air Force Captain Anthony Cannone, from Rockville Centre, proudly flew a KC-10 inflight refueler over Long Island as part of Air Force Week in New York City.
Cannone, a 2001 South Side High School graduate, volunteered to fly the heavy aircraft into John F. Kennedy Airport, where he picked up 40 members of the media and flew about 100 miles southeast of Long Island to meet with several F-15 fighters and show his passengers how jets refuel in midair.
Much like Navy Fleet Week, an Air Force website describes Air Force Week as “a program that provides the opportunity to show and tell civic leaders, opinion leaders and the general public what the Air Force does, while at the same time, demonstrating its gratitude to the communities that support it by engaging in events to give back.”
Cannone, 29, graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2005 and has been an Air Force pilot for 5 ½ years, as well as an instructor who trains pilots on the KC-10 in flights that regularly take him over Long Island at 20,000 feet. For the last year and a half he has been stationed at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and was deployed last week on a two-month mission to an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, during which he will refuel aircraft over Afghanistan. He will remain on active duty for at least five more years, he said.
The KC-10 is a modified DC-10. Because it is used for refueling and for cargo, it is considered to be one of the most versatile of the Air Force’s heavy aircrafts. It can carry up to 330,000 pounds — the equivalent of 50,000 gallons of fuel and 150,000 pounds of cargo. Cannone says he loves to fly it and his refueling and cargo missions have taken him to many countries around the world.
Married on May 5 to Megan Pearsall, a social worker, Cannone, who also received an MBA from Oklahoma State in 2010, is the son of Charles and Mary Ann Cannone, of Rockville Centre. His older brother, Stephen, performs corporate legal services in Florida and a younger brother, Michael, works for JP Morgan in Delaware.
