Ready to Launch

Getting out ahead of the ice storm in North Carolina, we took off from JAARS in the Samaritan's Purse Kodiak for Ft. Pierce, Florida, home of Missionary Flights International.  Three hours later we touched down, with Gerry Gardner on the controls.  Gerry is an old hand with JAARS aircraft, just new to the Kodiak.  JAARS and Samaritan's Purse are helping Mission Aviation Fellowship with the relief flight effort by adding one more Kodiak (MAF already has one there) and a pilot.  Tomorrow morning we will head out along the Bahamas and make Port Au Prince in about four hours.

Meanwhile, we had some time to kill at the Missionary Flights hangar, watching the amazing mobilization of goods and people.  Aircraft from several organizations are running between here and Haiti, making a round trip every day, and working into the night.  Here are some views of the MFI hangar turned into a storage and processing facility, overseen by a stately DC-3 that had to miss out on the action because it is down for repairs.

Tomorrow we'll arrive in Port Au Prince and join our colleagues already hard at work.