Down to Business

Friday, February 5

We  began the task of fitting into the team already working in high gear.  Below is a letter I wrote to friends not long after getting back home this week:

There I was again this morning, shoveling the cold white stuff off my driveway, not even one day after getting back home from Haiti. This time I didn’t need to speculate about how it would compare to the heat in Port Au Prince.


7:00 a.m. The pilots and mechanics would be gathering outside the residences of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) families to get into their Land Cruisers for the twenty minute ride to the airport where another day would begin.

Hundreds of personnel and tons of food and medical supplies have been pouring in via Missionary Flights International (“MFI”) of Ft. Pierce, FL. The material has to be sorted and stashed, then made into loads (about 1,800 lb.) that can be put into the Kodiaks for their quick flights to the outlying towns for delivery to relief workers, missionaries, orphanages, hospitals and “IDP” (internally displaces persons) camps that are growing as people flee Port Au Prince.

MAF has worked in Haiti for decades, and knows the country and people. The wives and kids have all been sent home, and in their place a team of about 30 pilots, mechanics, coordinators and logistics personnel (mostly men) have moved in, some sleeping at the airport in tents and in the hangar. The rest drive through town every night to “batch it” in the former residences of the MAF families. Electricity for the team is provided by solar power, batteries, and a few diesel generators. Water comes from rain cisterns. Internet comes via satellite. Phone service comes via a Voice-over Internet Protocol (VOIP) at the airport. The homes even have satellite TV which works on the available power.

In spite of all these essential logistical assets, the work is grueling and the hours long. Dust coats everything, including computers, airplanes (inside and out) and clothes. It creates a brown pall that hangs thousands of feet over the valley. But it will soon be replaced by mud as the rains begin, probably in a few weeks.

The staff from MAF, Samaritan’s Purse, JAARS, Missionary Flights International and others all work as one team. The two Kodiaks (one from MAF, the other from Samaritan’s Purse) sit on the ramp awaiting their next mission.

I was only there a week, and felt a little guilty leaving so soon, since the typical rotation is 3-4 weeks. But I accomplished the mission I was sent to do – fly down the Samaritan’s Purse Kodiak, and complete the training of the other JAARS pilot, Gerry Gardner, who will remain there another ten days.

My other responsibilities at JAARS remain. Bible translation goes on around the world, and requires our service. Two of our pilots from Papua new Guinea are at Spokane Turbine Center getting their Kodiak initial training. After a short week here, I will head up to Spokane with one of our fresh Kodiak instructors, Mark Wuerffel, and together we will finish the training of our pilots from PNG before they return to the field. Not only will we be finishing their training, but I will be using the process to polish Mark as a Kodiak instructor. That week will be followed by a week’s missions conference at our church here in Charlotte, and in early March I may be heading back to Haiti for a longer stint. Our next Kodiak is scheduled to be picked up at the factory the end of March.

This spring and summer suddenly got very complicated, but like I’ve said, the quake in Haiti wasn’t on anyone’s schedule.

Pray for the team there as they work to meet the overwhelming needs. Pray for good communication, extra measures of grace, and wisdom in evaluating the need. Pray for safety, good health and mechanical reliability of the equipment. Pray for workers and resources to continue coming. Pray for the people of Haiti as the medical needs change to disease control and treatment and as Port Au Prince’s squalor worsens and peoples’ living situation improves little. Pray for God to be manifestly glorified by what seems to be an impossible situation.

Thank you for your prayers to date.

MAF has served in Haiti for decades, and their hangar and the surrounding turf hosts the hub for processing and forwarding the material arriving from Ft. Pierce.  Their office is a finished (and air conditioned) shipping container.

Every day began with a quick meeting with a short meditation followed by announcements and flight schedule information.

The aircraft from the US arrived continually, bringing tons of food and medical supplies to be carried out to the surrounding towns and villages by the two Kodiaks and the other smaller MAF Cessnas.

Into the Thick of It

After a brief night in Ft. Pierce, Gerry and I took off for Port Au Prince in N466SP.  While we were directly over water most of the way, the Bahamas and Turcs and Caicos Islands offered plenty of places to which to divert in case of trouble.  Fuel was also available at a number of places along the way.  However, the Kodiak carried enough for the four hour flight with plenty of reserve.

By mid-afternoon we were on the General Aviation ramp at the Port Au Prince airport, next to the MAF Kodiak that had arrived over a week earlier.

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.

Kodiak Activity Ramps Up Again

Having had a short break from flying Kodiaks, Mark Wuerffel and I took advantage of Samaritan's Purse's airplane to brush up our flying/instructing skills in preparation for this year's activites.  Samaritan's Purse owns one Kodiak and had it in Alaska this summer.  They brought it down to their aviation base in North Carolina for the winter, and since we don't have one here at the moment, agreed to let us use it for a couple weeks.

Mark and I worked together to renew our proficiency in the airplane, and to finish his JAARS instructor standardization.

Then the world turned upside down in Haiti, and everyone's schedules changed.

Samaritan's Purse is asking JAARS to help them with crewing this Kodiak in Haiti, so we are planning to head that way late this week.  Mark will not be able to go with this first trip, but I will be accompanied by another JAARS pilot.  My first visit should only be a week or so, since we also have some our our pilots coming over from Papua New Guinea for training at STC in Spokane, and I need to go up there to finish that with them in late February.

It's looking very likely that Mark and I will find ourselves in Haiti for a good part of March.

Meanwhile, Mission Aviation Fellowship already has one of their Kodiaks in Haiti (this photo from their website).  MAF has provided service in that country for decades, and has other smaller aircraft permanently based there.  The Samaritan's Purse Kodiak will join MAF's Kodiak, and all the mission agencies involved will work together to operate and crew these aircraft.

Training, Next Phase

Less than a week after getting back to the United States, I headed to Spokane, WA to join up with two of our pilots from PNG, David Barton and Christopher Clark.  They were finishing two weeks of Kodiak training at the Spokane Turbine Center, and were our first two candidates to send through that course.  (See my blog posting "A Week in August" for a description of our part in developing this course for mission pilots.)

David and Christopher are veteran pilots in PNG, and have prior turbine aircraft experience, so this course was more of a "transition" course than much of an "initial" for them.  I showed up on Friday to fly with them in STC's airplane to put the JAARS finishing touches on their skills.  Flying in the mountains of the Northwest is a lot like in PNG, except for the traces of snow on the peaks this time of year.  And of course, the runways here are a lot more friendly!

Once back home they will begin their flying under supervision of Rick Nachtigal with whom I flew last month (see my preceding posts).  In the coming year we hope to send more of our PNG program pilots through STC in their transition to flying the Kodiak.  We also plan to have two more of these aircraft in PNG by the middle of next year, and eventually a total of four.

Once again I enjoyed flying in the beautiful Northwest.  These pictures are from some of our activities in the Priest Lake and Lake Couer D'Alene, Idaho areas.  These two guys soaked up the information on this new airplane, and did a great job learning the Kodiak's particular handling characteristics.  Like Rick before them, they will easily adapt it to the context in PNG that they're so familiar with.

Final Look at 008

I'm now back at home in North Carolina, but thought I would leave you with a few more images of 008 in its new environment.  Besides some trial flights in to some local mountain airstrips, we were able to do several operational flights in the three weeks I was there.  Currently the plane is in maintenance, and will emerge in several weeks with a new tail number -- "P2-SIB" of Papua New Guinean registration.  So, a farewell to N498KQ!

008 In the Village

On Wednesday we took 008 to some nearby villages (Obura, Gema and Owena) and got a preliminary look at how it will perform on the sloped, mountain airstrips. On this first time out, we kept the plane light – just three of us on board, and a light fuel load. Mark Wuerffel had joined us from JAARS a few days earlier, and he occupied the cockpit with Rick. I sat in a passenger seat behind and left the flying to them, since together they both have nearly thirty years of experience in PNG, and have flown into these three airstrips many times in other aircraft.

The village folk turned out as they usually do. Airplanes visit here frequently (it's a coffee producing area, and aircraft are the main mode of export).  Their arrival is often a source of entertainment, but a new airplane is especially noteworthy for them. In the years to come, Kodiaks will become a normal sight here, providing service to these communities, transporting church people, missionaries, medical teams, educators and a myriad of other types of passengers and cargo.

As time passes, our aviation staff will develop a set of standards for each of the several hundred airstrips in PNG with the Kodiak, for things like takeoff and landing weights, surface conditions, wind and weather minima. These will vary from site to site, based on the surrounding terrain, runway slope, length and typical wind patterns at each place. What we are learning about the Kodiak’s specific characteristics will be applied to each airstrip. Of course, the goal is to safely carry as large a load as possible in and out of these sites.