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Ill teen's fight aided by flight
1Kennedy
Kennedy Cobble talks about her experiences with Angel Flight during her battle with cancer. - photo by Autumn McBride
In a battle for her life, Kennedy Cobble didn’t have to pick just one option.She chose fight and flight.Cobble, a homebound Lambert High School senior, had the fight against cancer within herself. But the flights to hospitals for the treatments and surgeries weren’t something that would come naturally.Thanks to her neighbor and the nonprofit Angel Flight, Cobble was able to travel to hospitals by corporate plane at no cost these past four years.Angel Flight, founded in 1983, coordinates a network of about 800 pilots who offer flights to patients in need of transportation for non-emergency medical treatments.The nonprofit is based in Georgia and also serves residents of Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina and Tennessee.Volunteer pilots donate their services and planes to provide a more comfortable experience for patients, who are typically receiving potentially life-saving procedures, said Patti Atkins, executive assistant for Angel Flight.“For people that are sick, their immune systems are very weak and you don’t want to fly on a commercial airline with all the germs going around,” Atkins said. “This is more convenient.”Pilots are often retired and fly smaller, private aircraft, said Atkins, adding that Cobble’s experience on corporate jets has been a little out of the ordinary.Cobble, who recently turned 19, was diagnosed five years ago with osteosarcoma, a bone cancer prevalent in teens.