"Sharing God's love through aviation and technology to see isolated people physically and spiritually transformed in Christ's name"
And here are a few facts about MAF. MAF operates 135 aircraft in 26 countries and serves another 11 countries in a non-flying way. Every 4 minutes a MAF plane takes off or lands. There are more than 1300 staff serving and around 1500 organizations being served and the approximately 1500 destinations make clear, we are not the average airline...
But MAF in Timor-Leste is much smaller. We have 3 pilots and one national staff operating 2 GA-8 Airvans. One of our main task (40-50%) is flying patients from the districts to the national hospital. The so-called Medevacs (Medical-Evacuation) are partially funded by the ministry of health and the rest is subsidized by MAF. The numerous NGO's and private charters form the other half...
...so how does my, (Daniel's) day look like? It all depends on our customers. If they request a "first light" departure I have to go out of bed well before 5am but thankfully most people like to be fast asleep at that time... I usually have to get up 2 hours before the plane's departure time, 1 hour to prepare me and another one for the airplane ;-)
It takes me around 10 minutes to get to the airport depending on the route, traffic and personal fitness.
It takes me around 10 minutes to get to the airport depending on the route, traffic and personal fitness.
 |
| The "official" Route |
 |
| The "backyard" Route |
 |
| The "unofficial" one --- caution landing aircraft! |
Once I'm at the airport I've to start 'daily' the plane which basically means making sure that the plane is fit to fly. Then comes the boring part, submitting flight-plan, printing out the forecast weather (which is an educated guess at best), calculating the weight and balance, briefing the passengers and loading their luggage.
As soon as all of that's done I can jump in and get the start clearance from the Tower and off we go...
 |
| Based in Dili, flying to 8 Airstrips in the Districts |
 |
| The one and only "Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport" |
 |
| Atauro Island, 25Km north of Dili flight time 15' |
 |
| Los Palos, people use it as a road, buffaloes and horses use it for grazing flight time 45' |
 |
| Maliana, goats and cattle common, sometimes kids play soccer flight time 25' |
 |
| Oecussi, old is gone, new is under construction and landing on the temporary one flight time 45' |
 |
| Same, another shared Runway flight time 25' |
 |
| Suai, at the moment only for emergency use, until next months, or the one after... flight time 30' |
 |
| Baucau, our longest and highest used by the Indonesian army, then UN flight time 30' |
 |
| most recent reopened, 27th Nov 2015 flight time 30', by road 7 h+ |
As you can see from the flight times, all of our flights are well under one hour but it takes many hours to travel there by road. Critical patients often don't have that much time left and are totally in the hands of a team planning their medical evacuation by air. It is a huge privilege to be a part of that team but it also brings some big challenges with it (But more of that will follow on a separate Blog).
Thankfully not all of our flights are about life and death. A good amount goes toward development. Bringing water experts, teachers and other assessment teams into the Districts. Even prolonged flights with businessmen which are looking for investment possibilities around Timor-Leste are part of what we do. Bellow is a short clip about me driving to the airport. I hope you don't mind the bumpy ride...
