Aviators Against ALS Honors Peter Warlick During ISTAT Americas in San Diego

Moonshine Flats is a country bar in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, the kind of place that books live bands on Saturday nights and pours copious amounts of bourbon for tourists. On March 9 it served a different purpose altogether. Nearly 100 members of the aviation community filled the venue during the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading (ISTAT) Americas annual meeting to honor Peter Warlick, who passed away on June 18, 2025, at age 60, after living with ALS for nearly a decade.

Peter Warlick was an aviation lifer. He joined American Airlines in 1994 after a stint at Salomon Brothers, where he had become one of the firm’s youngest vice presidents, and spent the next 31 years rising from financial analyst to vice president of corporate development. Along the way he helped execute American’s historic 2011 fleet order and navigated the financial complexity of the 2013 US Airways merger. His professional network stretched across airlines, manufacturers, and financial institutions on multiple continents, and by all accounts he was the kind of person who remembered every name, returned every call, and kept relationships alive long after the deal had closed.

That network became the engine behind one of the most remarkable fundraising campaigns in ALS history. Diagnosed with the disease at age 50, Warlick went public with his condition at an ISTAT conference in 2016 and asked the people he had spent his career working alongside to help fund Answer ALS, the largest coordinated ALS research program ever undertaken. American Airlines committed $1 million early. Nearly 25 companies followed, competitors included. He named the campaign Warlick’s Warriors, later Aviators Against ALS, and directed every dollar to Answer ALS with all funded research open-sourced for the global scientific community. By the time of his death, the total exceeded $6 million.

He once compared ALS research to where cancer treatment stood 40 years ago, when a diagnosis meant one treatment path regardless of the patient, and he acknowledged publicly that breakthroughs would likely come too late for him. He funded the work anyway.

The evening at Moonshine Flats honored that drive, and purpose, and the man behind it. Aviators Against ALS leaders Matt Landess, Christine Ford and Matt Hoesley shared heartfelt remarks alongside Answer ALS Managing Director Clare Durrett, each reflecting on Peter’s influence and what he meant to the people who knew him. Members of the ISTAT band performed a song in his honor. By the end of the evening, attendees continued Peter’s mission and had raised over $60,000 for ALS research.

Aviators Against ALS has long supported Answer ALS as the presenting sponsor of the Game Changer Gala and co-host of the annual Game Changer Golf Classic. The San Diego event took place at the same conference where Warlick first told his story nearly ten years ago, and it was the kind of evening he would have appreciated: personal, direct and full of the people he had spent a career bringing together around a meaningful cause.

Answer ALS is grateful to Altavair, American Airlines, Pratt & Whitney, and Skyworks for sponsoring the evening.