Mission aviation pilots put faith in their wings

You expect commercial pilots operating in the bush to face certain occupational challenges: Unimproved airstrips. Mechanical problems encountered in remote locations. Lack of navaids and weather reports. But for one class of bush pilot, such hazards don’t always top the list of dangers.

“During the Ebola outbreak in October of ’07, we went into the hot zone two and three times a day,” said David Francis, a Cessna TU206 pilot from Memphis, Tenn., who operates out of Ndolo Airport (FZAB) in Kinshasa, the Congo. “Nobody else would fly in there. Even the UN pilots refused. They didn’t want to go into a contagious area. We just see this as firmly within our mission.”

But what kind of mission would require that kind of commitment and potential sacrifice?

“Helping relieve suffering,” Francis said. “That’s why God put us here.

The mission, simply put, is mission aviation: pilots, deeply committed to their religious beliefs, flying in support of missionary and humanitarian activities around the globe. In addition to the challenges associated with bush flying, over the years mission aviation pilots have contended with armed insurgencies, government harassment, civil unrest, natural disasters and even death at the hands of indigenous peoples they seek to help.

The global mission

Dozens of missionary aviation organizations operate around the globe. The International Association of Missionary Aviation in Worthington, Minn. (this website) counts some 50 in its membership, according to president Chuck Daly. Francis, the pilot in the Congo, flies for Mission Aviation Fellowship ( www.maf.org), based in Nampa, Idaho, one of the oldest and largest such organizations. Operating in Africa, Asia and the Americas, its 130 aircraft conducted more than 88,000 flights last year, serving some 3,000 locations, the great majority of them remote and otherwise inaccessible.

“The kind of environment we fly in is hostile, not just in the air and in the airstrips, but in the countries in which our people are based,” said John Boyd, MAF president and himself a former mission aviation pilot. “Most of the time you’re living in situations with no running water, no constant electricity, no telephone, no shops. You have none of the support you would have grown up with here in the U.S.”

MAF’s roots go back to World War II, an outgrowth of prayer meetings held by a small group of pilots operating in the Pacific theater. The gatherings gave rise to the Christian Airmen’s Missionary Fellowship, MAF’s predecessor organization, launched in 1945. The following year the organization began missionary work in Mexico with its first airplane, a 1933 Waco

Initially operations were focused solely on the ministry, such as bringing translated Bibles to remote villages and transporting missionaries to their posts. But In the decades since, the scope and scale of MAF’s operations have grown dramatically.

“Basically, you become the logistics system of the country,” said Harry Berghuis, a Papua, Indonesia-based MAF pilot from Holland. “Everything that needs to be transported has to be done by the airplane. We form a big part of that.”
“Typically in a week we’re flying a mixture of freight, medicines and parts to the interior stations, and we do the mail delivery as well to a lot of the small villages,” said Francis of his work in Africa. “And we’re flying sick people in and out of the villages to better equipped hospitals, and flying missionaries and pastors.”

MAF also transports personnel from NGOs (non-governmental organizations) such as the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. But make no mistake: spiritually rewarding though it may be, there is nothing glamorous about this work.

“It’s not about just jumping in your airplane and having a jolly for a couple of hours,” Boyd said. “You’re going out of eight to ten tiny airstrips a day, loading and unloading in 110 degree heat, flying around weather and over mountain ranges.”

Candidate requirements

Because of the demands of this calling, both in the air and on the ground, prospective MAF pilots are carefully screened and evaluated. All MAF pilot/mechanics must complete a minimum of 400 hours of flight time, and hold instrument and commercial ratings. And because they are expected to maintain and repair as well as fly the airplanes, they must also have an A&P (airframe and powerplant) license. Twelve credit hours of biblical training is another requirement. MAF also evaluates prospective pilots and their spouses – who will be stationed with them, along with their children, during the two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half year terms they are expected to serve – to ensure they are psychologically fit to handle life in the field.

“It’s not for everybody,” said Brent Palmer, another Papua, Indonesia-based MAF pilot. “I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. There are people who come out with good faith and they can’t hack it. The stress, the remoteness, the difficulty in living, whatever it is, it was just not what they expected.’’

Another requirement of missionary life further filters out all but the most committed: Missionary pilots are expected to raise the money to underwrite their service, typically from their church, community, and other sponsors. MAF pilot salaries are pegged to the cost of living in the country of operation. A pilot with a family of four earns an average $2,627 per month.

All applicants accepted for consideration undergo a technical evaluation at MAF headquarters. The evaluation includes ten hours, divided between flight time in a turbocharged Cessna TU206 to check their piloting abilities, and in a simulator to test instrument flight skills. That’s followed by a practical examination of their A&P talents. Thirteen to fifteen pilots undergo technical evaluation annually, and about 10 go on to the next phase, technical standardization training.

“Attitude is everything,” said Dave Ringenberg, an MAF instructor pilot. “It’s easy to teach a skill. It’s harder to teach an attitude.”

Training

Technical standardization consists of 40 hours of ground school followed by 30 hours of flight in a C-TU206 equipped with Garmin GNS 430 IFR-certified panel-mounted GPS, a Codan HF radio (used for transmitting position reports to a base station) and STOL kits. During this training pilots learn the standard procedures MAF uses everywhere it operates, focusing on three key areas: checklists, dealing with terrain, and making stabilized, power-on approaches.
“A written checklist is used for all phases of flight and preflight for MAF operations,” said Ringenberg.

The training location takes advantage of Idaho’s wealth of challenging back-country strips, giving trainees a taste of the kind of terrain and rugged landing sites they’ll encounter in the field. These operations also hammer home why power-on approaches are a necessity for bush ops: shifting winds and up- and downdrafts require power management to negotiate while maintaining a precise approach angle and airspeed. The end result is a predictable touchdown point.
Given the training, commitment and skill required for this kind of aviating, it’s noteworthy that many who find their way into MAF were not pilots when they decided to enter this line of work.

“I had a desire to be in full time ministry, the Lord just hadn’t shown me what it was going to look like yet,” said Texas-born Palmer, who before coming to MAF was a software engineer for Morristown, NJ-based Honeywell International, working on TCAS II, the airline collision avoidance device. “Right after I got married I heard about mission aviation, how they could use airplanes in ministry. I wasn’t even a pilot.”

“We asked the Lord what he wanted us to do,” said Berghuis of he and his wife, Willie. “And over and over it came to our attention there was a shortage of pilots in mission work. We thought, ‘Hey, maybe this is it,’ and decided if the Lord wanted us to do that, he’d show us how. We don’t have to worry about the details.” According to Berghuis, support just seemed to fall into place. “He provided in a miraculous way,” Berghuis said.

Even Ringenberg, the instructor pilot, heard the call of his faith before that of the sky. “I had a desire to serve God, but I didn’t know how. One day a friend encouraged me to be a missionary,” Ringenberg said. “That same friend encouraged me to look into aviation. I never thought of that before.”

Education of a missionary pilot

A number of Bible colleges offer aviation programs, enabling students to graduate with all the ratings, licenses, and religious training a mission aviation career requires. But it seems each pilot finds his own path to the left seat, and each represents a tale of persistence and faith rewarded. Palmer, after four years at Honeywell and a lot of soul searching with his wife, Melanie, and church members, enrolled in LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas, a Christian school with a mission aviation program. In three years he had his requisite licenses and a bachelor of science degree and a minor in Bible studies.

“That got me about 250 hours of flight time,” Palmer said. “MAF required 400, so I had to get another 150 hours.”

Palmer went back to work as a programmer and convinced his company to give him the cash equivalent of an airplane ticket when he had to travel on business. He used the money toward the rental of a Piper Warrior and flew himself on the trips, building up hours while he honed the pilotage navigational skills of a missionary aviator.

“I flew from east Texas to Toronto, Ontario, and I never turned on a nav radio,” Palmer said. “I flew the whole trip 1,000 feet AGL (above ground level). I had drawn exactly on the sectionals where I was going to go – you have to recognize every landmark you fly over.”

Palmer was accepted for his technical evaluation by MAF with 401.2 hours total time. He passed the flying evaluation with glowing reviews but failed the maintenance check.

“That was pretty devastating at first,” Palmer recalled. “They said to go work for a year as an aircraft mechanic and come back. But I was over 30 at that point. I had been working on this goal for many years.”

After considering his situation, the evaluation team told Palmer to get a C-206 service and parts manuals, study hard, and get some A&P work. Six months later Palmer came back and passed the maintenance exam, and then the month-long technical standardization course.

“From there they put you on a pretty well thought out regime preparing you to get overseas,” Palmer said.

Field conditions

But the novice’s training is far from over. After arriving on station, pilots often spend months before they fly. Rigorous language instruction and cultural orientation courses come first. Flying begins only after the pilot and his family are settled and integrated into the community. It commences with more training, applying the standard operating procedures learned in Idaho to the specific locations in which they fly. Typically MAF operates out of one or more main bases in a given country, from where pilots access to a network of remote locations. MAF operates both C-TU206s and the turbine powered C-208 Cessna Caravan.

The en route terrain often has no distinct features: no roads, power lines, or human settlements to help with pilotage. Everyone involved in mission aviation acknowledges that GPS with moving map displays has revolutionized the task of navigating in these remote landscapes.

“The GPS has allowed us to operate with more precision and safety, and with a lot less stress,” said Francis. “I don’t have to get down so low and look at all the individual river bends, the little-bitty landmarks they had to use in past, just to keep from being disoriented. We can get above the cloud layers.”

Francis, by the way, came to mission aviation after 17 years of designing advanced military aircraft for Lockheed Martin, the Bethesda, Md.-based defense contractor. “Be prepared to follow God’s leading – no matter what stage in life you may be in,” he said of his late start as a missionary pilot. “Don’t be surprised if that path may make some big turns along the way.”

Guidance from above notwithstanding, MAF pilots must be prepared to fly all their routes without GPS. Equipment failures have occurred in the field, and the units have to be considered as back-up gear. Pilots typically use ONC charts for navigation, and in the parts of the world where MAF operates, large swaths of the charts may be blank, accompanied by a simple printed legend noting that relief data is unavailable; the pilots are operating in uncharted territory.

The airstrips are typically hacked out of jungle, sometimes on mountainsides. Cleared areas can be little more than 1,000 feet in length, and sloped 20 degrees or more. Rain can render them unusable with no visual indication. Swirling gusts created by orographic lifting can routinely render strips unusable after midmorning. Some are tucked into valleys so steep and narrow that a mile out on final the pilot is committed to landing; there’s not enough lateral room for a 180 degree turn, and the terrain ahead rises too steeply to outclimb.

“You take a pilot who hasn’t been exposed (to such conditions) into those strips, he’ll be blown away,” said Berghuis. “We can do it because of our training. And even more important is the proper decision-making. You have to be able to decide, ‘Is it safe to land?’”

Keeping the faith

Truly the dedication and sacrifice mission pilots routinely make is a testament to their tremendous conviction. Yet some might contend all pilots are creatures of faith. How can one not believe in the miraculous if he is willing to bet his life time and again that a hunk of metal weighing more than a ton can move through the sky, seemingly impervious to gravity’s pull? And most aviators regard the cockpit as a sanctuary, and flight as a spiritual experience. How else to explain the aviator’s axiom, “God is my co-pilot”?

Boyd chuckles when asked for comment about that phrase, and whether it carries increased weight for mission aviation pilots.

“We tend to believe that very openly at MAF,” Boyd said. “I have been a pilot and have been in situations where I can honestly testify I know God was with me. Certain things happened and otherwise I would not have survived. And there are many instances daily where we can truthfully testify that is a distinct feeling, call it what you will. (But) you try not be flippant about it. (MAF) pilots have lost their lives.”

And not just in accidents. In 1956, missionary pilot Nate Saint and four colleagues were killed in Ecuador by the Auca Indians they had come to help. News of the tragedy spread worldwide, drawing attention to missionary aviation and bringing more volunteers and supporters. (Seven of the nine Indians who attacked the missionaries and many of the tribe members subsequently converted to Christianity.) No MAF pilot has been lost in more than a decade, but overall, 18 have died in accidents.

“And the question is,” Boyd continued, “‘Where was God then?’ As Christians we have to say that is part of God’s plan.”

However one regards the plans and designs of the divine, MAF and its brethren organizations are witnessing an increase in mission aviation. And that is a blessing for the multitudes who depend on the aerial lifeline they provide.
“We think that missionary aviation is going to be around for a long time,” said Ringenberg. “There will always be people in need in remote locations around the world, and people who want to serve God by serving people.”

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By James Wynbrandt
Reprinted with permission of Pilot Magazine.

MAF Dedicates Its First KODIAK Missionary Plane

NAMPA, Idaho – MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) inaugurated a new era in missionary aviation when it dedicated its first KODIAK aircraft on May 2 at its headquarters here.

MAF is a faith-based, nonprofit ministry that serves missions and isolated people around the world with aviation, communications and learning technologies. The new KODIAK is the first of the next-generation bush planes to be produced under a visionary arrangement between MAF and the manufacturer, Quest Aircraft Co. of Sandpoint, Idaho.

This first KODIAK will be deployed in Papua, Indonesia.

A crowd of MAF staff, Christian leaders and Nampa residents participated in the dedication ceremony, as well as an afternoon of activities.

“Today’s events celebrate a technological achievement that will allow MAF to be more effective stewards of the resources God has given us,” said John Boyd, president of MAF. “But this new KODIAK is more than an example of leading-edge technology. It is an example of what God’s people can do when they pursue God’s will in God’s way. The unprecedented cooperation between missionary organizations that made this day possible is a model for 21st century missionary efforts. It is both exciting and humbling to be in the midst of a project that God has blessed so abundantly.”

Paul Schaller, chief executive officer of Quest Aircraft Co., told the crowd, “Serving the needs of the missionary community and those they help is the purpose for which Quest was built. It is gratifying to see it come to fruition with this first delivery to MAF.”

Among local leaders participating in the dedication ceremony were Tom Dale, the mayor of Nampa, and Montie Ralston, lead pastor of Boise Valley Christian Communion and a member of the MAF board of directors.

The dedication ceremony marks a milestone in missionary aviation in part because the KODIAK will be significantly less expensive to operate than the planes it will replace in the MAF fleet. Most MAF planes, including the popular Cessna 206, run on aviation gasoline, or “avgas,” which is scarce and expensive in many of the remote areas where MAF operates. However, the KODIAK is powered by jet fuel, which is more plentiful and much less expensive than avgas.

Over the next few years, MAF will replace 20 of its Cessna 206s with planes that operate on jet fuel, either KODIAKs or Cessna Caravans. Because the KODIAK can carry nearly twice the cargo of the C206, MAF will transport medicine, food and disaster relief supplies much more efficiently, reducing operating costs.

Founded in the United States in 1945, MAF (HYPERLINK “http://www.maf.org”www.maf.org) missionary teams of aviation, communications, technology and education specialists overcome barriers in remote areas, transform lives and build God’s Kingdom by enabling the work of more than 1,000 organizations in isolated regions around the world. With its fleet of 130 bush aircraft, MAF serves in 55 countries, with an average of 242 flights daily across Africa, Asia, Eurasia and Latin America. MAF pilots transport missionaries, medical personnel, medicines and relief supplies, as well as conduct thousands of emergency medical evacuations. MAF also provides telecommunications services, such as satellite Internet access, high frequency radios, electronic mail and other wireless systems.

IAMA Podcast Episode 01-Mission Aviation Fellowship

Today we visit with Ron Hilbrands, Manager of Recruiting and a twenty five plus year veteran with MAF.

(Website: www.maf.org & www.mafrecruiting.org)

A day in the life of an MAF pilot

My name is Sandy Toomer and I was a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) pilot/mechanic serving in Shell, Ecuador from 1995 until May, 2002. This is taken from a journal I kept while living there. Currently I live and work in Auburn, Alabama with my wonderful wife of thirty years, Trish.  This story is timeless and hope it inspires and encourages you.  This story was also used  by AOPA magazine in an article they did on Mission Aviation.  Enjoy.

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What is a typical day? We have a saying that “Change is subject to plan.” No two days are alike here with constant changes in needs and weather, so the number one rule here as a pilot is be flexible.

My typical day has me come to the hangar with the rest of the gang at 8 AM for prayer and a rundown of the day’s schedule both in flight and maintenance.

By 8:15 we split up and go to our respective corners of the hangar to preflight our aircraft, check loads with the cargo handlers then calculate our fuel need and give the requests to the fuelers. Up to this point the day is going as planned.

But wait…it just began to rain. Rain is a constant companion here where we receive more than 22 feet of it annually. That’s right 22 feet! But then, this is the rainforest.

We have another saying, this one regarding the rain, “Starts before 7, over by 11. Starts after 8, it’ll keep on ’till late.” So I guess I can plan on a rainy day of flying if we even get off. As I watch the deluge splatter the tarmac, our flight coordinator, Tomás, trots up to me.

“Capitán there’s a snake bite patient in Molino. As soon as the weather breaks we’ll send you out. It’s a small boy…he was bitten in the face…yesterday.”

By 10 AM the rain slows, the reports out in the jungle are improving and I decide it’s worth a try to get the boy out. I depart within fifteen minutes for the thirty minute flight out to Molino, a Quichua village.

After landing on the gooey surface I can see it is bad. His head has swollen to the size of a soccer ball and his breathing is labored as his mouth and likely throat are closing off. I customarily shake hands with as many people as I can then load the boy and his mom on board my 206 for the flight back to Shell. A soon as I land in Shell, the boy will be sent by ambulance to the HCJB Hospital Vozandes, five minutes from the MAF hangar.

As soon as I get back I find that my original schedule has been shot to pieces due the spotty rain throughout the jungle. We’ll do what we can today and make up for it tomorrow…if it doesn’t rain…as much.

On this flight I leave Shell to the southwest where some missionaries are working to translate the Old Testament into the Shuar language. My mission is to pick up five Shuar Indians in three villages and and get them back to Makuma before the rain starts up again.

By 2 PM I finish up and I’m ready to leave Makuma for another five landings and take-offs to pick up more medical emergencies and run them over to a jungle hospital operated by the Ecuadorian government, in Taisha.

By 5 PM, I depart Taisha still with one last stop. Go by San Carlos and pick up a carpenter and his crew and tools. They have been building a new school building in the village. From San Carlos we’ll head back to Shell.

Ahh….but wait. The rain. A new wave has formed up north of Shell and is plying it’s way south.

As I get closer to Shell it indeed looks dark, very dark, dreary and gray. The approach controller is still calling the visibility better than 10 kilometers (VFR here) however with rain to the north of the airport, moving closer.

Switching gears, I pull out the instrument approach plate and give it the once over like a hundred times before. The primary approach we use into Shell is a VOR/DME Arc beginning 8 kilometers out. However we also have another straight-in VOR/DME approach and of course what would life be without one of those wonderful NDB
approaches, the epitome of “non-precision”.

Once I’m on the radial, I strain through the rain and haze then finally see runway three-zero ahead and call “Runway in sight”. Within three minutes I taxi up to the large Shell hangar just as the bottom drops out.

It’s nearly 6 PM. After twelve landings, 3.5 hours of Tach-time, forty minutes of actual instrument conditions and an approach to minimums my day is done. Hey, and it’s just Monday!

Just for grins, here is a video pieced together that day of one of the landings:

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my life as a missionary pilot with MAF.

To find out more why not contact Mission Aviation Fellowship today.  Here is a link to their recruiting website.

MAF Caravan-A floating workhorse

From Aviation News Magazine

Unique operational environments need unique solutions. In Bangladesh, the use of an amphibious aircraft for humanitarian work is answering such a need.

After just a 30-min inspection for Customs approval and only three hours for final import documentation to be approved, Mission Aviation Fellowship’s (MAF) new amphibious Cessna Caravan, S2-AEC, arrived in Bangladesh in August 2005 to begin work from its base at Dhaka. The smart new aircraft, purchased through generous donations from individuals, churches and charitable trusts, replaces a long-serving but ageing de Havilland Canada Beaver floatplane.

MAF, a Christian-based organisation established just after the Second World War by some former pilots, has been operating in Bangladesh since 1997 and anyone visiting this Asian country soon realises that it is one of the world’s poorest, most densely populated and least developed nations. Development is severely hindered by its geography and climate. With 75% of the total area covered in water and only 12 airstrips, it takes a special type of aircraft to operate there. One third of its 138 million people live below the poverty line, but the countless rivers and the huge Ganges Delta make traveling to receive vital help extremely difficult if not impossible. Water-borne diseases are common, yet medical care and support is limited due to the inaccessibility of many communities. However, with an amphibious aircraft, stretches of water no longer pose a barrier for those in need of help. Landing at over 200 sites, MAF reaches the least accessible areas, bringing life-changing and life-saving support and hope.

The organization’s role in Bangladesh is to show God’s love through providing transport to gain medical assistance by air for the needy and disadvantaged. The Beaver was frequently in need of repairs and out of service so a replacement was clearly required if MAF was to continue its work. The new Caravan was a logical successor with its ability to fly more passengers, carry between 80 and 160% more payload and reach its destination quicker. The organization already operated 21 Caravans around the world in countries as diverse as Angola, Chad, Mongolia, Sumatra, Brazil, Papua and South Africa, so it was well aware of the capability of the type.