Juliana Turchetti. Photo by AgAir Update. Used with permission.
Juliana Turchetti, a trailblazing Brazilian aerial firefighter and owner of Springfield, Illinois-based Aviatori Coffee, died Wednesday while fighting a fire in Montana.
Working on behalf of Idaho-based company Dauntless Air, the 45-year-old native of Minas Gerais was flying a FireBoss plane contracted to the U.S. Forest Service in order to fight a man-made fire when the plane crashed. Turchetti was the only person on board. Local and federal authorities said the accident is under investigation.
Turchetti was an admired figure in the aviation and coffee industries, both of which she came to through childhood passions in Brazil. Turchetti was recently in the process of selling the Aviatori Coffee house in Springfield in order to devote more time to her aviation career.
After deciding at the age of 12 that her calling was in the sky, Turchetti took her first flight as a flight attendant in Brazil at age 21 in order to save money to become a pilot. She would eventually accrue more than 6,000 flight hours while earning numerous piloting and instructors’ licenses, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was also a regular contributor to the B2B news publication AgAir in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Turchetti moved to the United States in 2017, pursuing aviation jobs in Nevada, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Texas before eventually landing in the city of Havana, Illinois, to fly agricultural planes.
While in Havana and missing the coffee of her home country, Turchetti started bringing in roasted coffees then green coffees from Minas Gerais. She began importing and roasting the greens for farmers market sales, then launched the family-run Aviatori Coffee shop in 2022 inside a historic Springfield house.
In a 2022 radio interview with NPR Illinois, Turchetti shared some of her thoughts on coffee, urging guests to be brave.
“I love telling people what I know about coffee, because it’s a constant learning for me; I’m still learning a lot,” she said. “So don’t ever feel intimidated. If anyone is listening to us and wants to go there and ask questions. I’m more than happy to answer. And, the good coffee is the one that you like.”
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