Angel Flight the Mooney Way

[jlunseth]

My aircraft, a 231, was stuck in the shop this spring because of COVID. Once it came out in May, I decided to use the COVID slowdown as an opportunity to fly more for Angel Flight. It occurred to me last week, in the middle of a long day aloft, that we are privileged to fly a remarkable, versatile aircraft. I live in Minneapolis. The day that made me think about this, required my little engine-that-thought-it-could to first fly from KFCM early in the morning to Fargo to pick up blood and bone marrow samples. I brought nothing along except my flight bag and iPad, so was able to stuff 8 good sized boxes into the baggage compartment and back seat. The plane was completely full except for the front seat, so I could put my morning coffee there temporarily. 260 lbs. of freight, plus me at 200 plus full fuel (75.6 gallons) and there was still room in the W&B. 

The material needed to be delivered in Billings MT. For many aircraft that is two jumps, but it was a one jump flight for the Mooney. Not necessarily an easy one, the winds aloft were very adverse so, being alone and not having to worry about passenger comfort, I elected to stay down at 4,000 until near Billings, then go to six (Billings is 3,700). It can be bumpy down low and out west as the ground heats up in the summer and this was no exception, made for a tiring flight. I was still able to make 150-160 over the ground at 11.3 LOP for the trip to KBIL.

When the boxes were delivered in BIllings I put on full fuel. The day was not done yet. I needed to get to KBIS lickety split to pick up a young family whose infant daughter was due to have surgery in Minneapolis over the weekend. I put on the cannula, went to 15,000, and made about 231 kts. GS to Bismarck. At KBIS I had one tank topped off, but left some out of the second tank so I could take on me plus three passengers and baggage. At 7 pm the young family showed up. With an infant in the back I did not want to use the O2 system, so we stayed at 11,000 and made about 220 kts. in smooth air. It was a fun ride, my brothers and I have hunted and fished out in western ND for quite awhile, and it turned out I knew the same people and the same hunting holes in the same small towns as the young husband. Who knows, maybe I will get to go out and hunt with him some time.

With the passengers safely delivered at KFCM, I was finally able to go home for the night.  It was a long day, up at 5 a.m. to get to the airport, pre-flight, etc., and get out to KFAR through some weather to make my first pickup of the day, to about 9 p.m. when I got back home, with time for a short nap in the lounge at KBIS and not much else.

Although this trip involved only large airfields (KBIL is a Class C, KBIS and KFAR are D's with KFAR having a TRSA), Angel Flights very often involve fetching passengers out of small rural fields.  I have handed passengers off to business jets at an interim airport, but they can't get in where we can, they need us to get the passengers out of the little holes in the wall. Out "on the road," I have handed off to a few Cirrus pilots, but mostly 172's and 182's, they just don't have the speed or the range that our Mooneys do.

Thought number one is that it is truly a remarkable aircraft that we fly, able to take on just about anything except TStorms (which nobody fights with), ice, and zero zero landings. Lots of range, lots of speed when needed, miserly fuel flow.

Thought number two is that those of us who fly for AF need more of you.  The passengers' needs have not diminished during COVID, but there seem to be fewer pilots.  I get emails almost weekly from AF asking for help with flights for the following week that have not been filled yet.  What better way to make a brand like Mooney stand for something. The coolest thing about flying for AF is that, unlike most charities where you just send a check every year, during an Angel Flight the person you are helping is in the right seat. You get to talk, find out something about their lives, help in ways other than just giving money, help keep their spirits up. I can tell you that the patients going through chemo really need that part of the AF program as much as the physical transportation, just someone who cares.

I know, I know, if no pics it didn't happen.  Sorry, I have pics but won't share them. These are medical patients some of them fighting for their lives and all are in need. We respect their privacy. There might be a few on the wall in my den though, just to remember.

Edited July 31, 2020 by jlunseth

[Amelia]

Angel Flight is my favorite charity flying.
Young Eagles are great fun, but there’s the silly and insulting EAA’s insistence that olunteer pilots must be told every year how not to molest three boisterous nine-year-olds during a 12-minute flight in busy airspace. Hardly seems worth my considerable time and expense to be treated like a suspected creep.. 

Pilos ‘n’ Paws seems a disorganized zoo, with no oversight or effective guidance. Ride requesters don’t have a clue of what information is needed and what is not. And what requests are reasonable and practical. So many are not. (No, Ma’am, I can’t fly your terminally ill “sweet old man” pooch halfway across the continent to a no-kill shelter...somewhere, not sure where, but it’s near Texas. No, 600 pounds of uncrated adult Great Danes and their pups aren’t going to work out for me. . Really sorry, but no.Again this week., ...

That leaves me with Angel Flight. They are pros, knowledgeable, flexible, and well-organized. The patients are educated and prepared, and ever so grateful. They’re often enthusiastic passengers, loving the ride. And getting them to medical expertise, or home again, really makes a huge difference to somebody whose life so needs a little joy.

so, yeah. If you have a. Mooney, and experience, and in some areas a current instrument ticket, you’ll be welcomed with open arms.

[carusoam]

JL, you are a quintessential MSer! and super human being...

Thanks for sharing the details.

Best regards,

-a-

[steingar]

Here you need the IR.  I want it, but to get it is a whole bunch of cash I don't have. So no AF for me.  One of my pals gave a talk about Angel flight to our local EAA chapter.  His conclusion: "Don't get sick in a small town".

[Hank]

43 minutes ago, steingar said:

One of my pals gave a talk about Angel flight to our local EAA chapter.  His conclusion: "Don't get sick in a small town".

Much of America lives in small towns. The small town that my mail comes from (population estimated at 1015) is nine miles away; for several years I worked in a larger town (almost 5000 souls) that's 14 miles in a different direction. Our county seat is about the same distance as the county seat the next county over, where I keep my Mooney--call them both 25 minutes away, and about 7000 and 15,000 souls respectively.

I'd like to do some Angel Flights, but would really like a mentor and ride-along first. But I did join Operation Airdrop to help carry relief supplies after hurricanes, usually the first week after devastation while the large agencies are getting in gear, and the roads are being opened up again.

[Trailboss]

I've done a couple of Angel Flights as well, usually really rewarding flights.  The last one was 40 gallons of water to the Navajo Res in Arizona.  I've flown passengers also, but some aren't as pleased about the boarding procedure.  Apparently they were more used to Bonanza's and club seating.  Oh well, can't please everyone...

[jlunseth]

If you join, don’t expect it to necessarily be easy on you. I don’t mean its not fun, it certainly is. I don’t mean that AF makes it difficult because the staff at AF does just the opposite, if you need help they take care of you, always. I don’t mean you won’t have to wake up very early some mornings. But we are helping people many of whom are in a fight for their lives and they don’t always win... .

The job is to give them hope and help. Please?

The passengers must be ambulatory, able to get in and out of an aircraft on their own. Yes, getting in and out of a Mooney can be a little bit of a chore for some. The pilot is responsible for calling the patient and setting up the flight, and I always talk to them about it before hand. But they do not complain. They are just grateful. Give them the smoothest, fastest, best ride you can, Mooneys are great at that.

Hank, if you want some mentoring I would suggest you get in touch with Mercy Flight Southeast, mercyflightse.org . The organization I belong to is Angel Flight Central, they are headquartered in Kansas City and cover the midwest. There are several regional organizations and they belong to the Air Charity Network, aircharitynetwork.org . If anyone wants to locate their regional organization, go on Air Charity’s website and they are all listed.  Long flights are coordinated between the organizations. So it is not uncommon to take someone from Minneapolis, to somewhere in Illinois or Indiana, where another pilot from another regional organization picks them up and takes them home to West Virginia (for example), or Florida, or wherever they call home.  If you contact the organization for your region and ask them about mentoring and help getting into the program, I am sure they will bend over backwards to make it so, and if they don’t you just email me. It is not complicated, there is an orientation to go through and some forms to fill out, but they make it as easy as they can. If you would like to talk on the phone, just pm me and I will send you my phone number, I will tell you what I can.

The Air Charity Network organizations are the first one’s at the door when there is a disaster and a need to fly supplies. This summer they have flown large quantities of supplies to Dakota and southwest Indian reservations in desperate need of COVID supplies. We fly blood and bone marrow and tissue sample (all boxed up). Other than this year, we fly quite a few camp flights, missions to take kids to camps for children with HIV or other special needs camps. “Pilot, when are we going to get there?” But mostly we fly patients.

Mooneys are uniquely suited to long cruise flights, but AF breaks up missions into segments of around 250 nm so pilots don’t have to overstretch themselves or their resources. Doesn’t mean you can take two or three linked missions and fly someone from KFCM to KABQ in your Mooney, it will do that job where many of the other GA aircraft can’t without refueling.

About the most complicated part is remembering to call ground control for your clearance using your designated Angel Flight number. If you are like me, you are used to using your own tail number so much that comes about half way out of your mouth before you catch yourself and correct.

Edited July 31, 2020 by jlunseth

[Bob - S50]

I miss my Angel Flights.  Can't wait to start flying them again.  I suspect the reason there seem to be fewer pilots is for the same reason I have not been flying lately.  I'm 68 and my wife is 66 so my COO says she doesn't want me flying with passengers just yet.  Once they have a vaccine you can bet I'll be at it again.

It was my experience that hundreds of pilots sign up to do Angel Flights, but only dozens fly on a regular basis.  When I look through the list of pilots most of them have zero to 3 flights even though they've been signed up for 5+ years.  There are a few that fly hundreds of flights and a significant number that have flown 20+ flights.  When you remove a significant percentage of pilot's from a relatively small pool, it becomes quite a bit harder to fill the missions.

I'm hoping by early next year the vaccine will be available and life will return to normal.

[jlunseth]

The patients are checked at every medical appointment for COVID symptoms, and they mostly come from rural areas where there is no or very little COVID, so the chances are small, but the chances are not non-existent for any of us, anywhere. However, there are non-patient flights as well, with limited contact with others.  I have hauled blood and bone marrow (boxed up), and there are flights for mothers' milk, medical supplies to rural areas, disaster relief supplies and others. It would be helpful if those who are concerned about patient contact would pick up the non-patient flights, it would lift some of the burden on those of us who are willing to fly patients.

I should explain how this all works, I am getting some questions. It may vary from one regional Air Charity organization to another, so always check the region's requirements.

To be a volunteer command pilot you must have 250 hours of PIC time and 500 total hours, a PPL and an instrument rating. You need to carry $1 million in insurance. Congress passed a law (imagine that!) in 2018 limiting liability to the pilot's insurance). You do not need to own and aircraft but most do.  You must do an orientation, which is basically watching an AOPA webinar on charitable flying (WINGS credit) and reading the AF organization's manual. Once you have done an orientation, you do not need to do it again so long as you fly one mission every 24 months.  These are the AF Central (AFC) requirements, there are other more detailed requirements on their website (angelflightcentral.org). Other regional organizations may have other requirements.  

You do not need to be a Command Pilot to contribute. Command pilots can request another pilot to fly with them and AF will organize that. AF also needs "Ground Angels" who pick the passengers up at an airport and drive them to their appointment, and there are also Mission Assistants who can be non-pilots. Command Pilots can request an MA. Usually, W & B is the problem with a second or an MA, but I have handed off to pilots who are operating as two-person crews (of small aircraft).

Once on board, the AF organization receives the requests to fly a patient, either from a patient themself, but more often from a health care provider. They vet the patient for financial need and if the flight is accepted, they explain the rules to the patient. Max 50 lbs. in luggage for example. Flights are posted to an Internet bulletin board that gives some basic information, date of the flight, W & B information, general nature of the patient's health issue. Pilot's log on and request a flight, or if you want, a succession of linked flights. AF reviews and approves in short order.  

You then receive a Mission Itinerary. It provides among other things the contact information for the patient (or an organization, if, i.e., it is a tissue shipment). It is up to the pilot to contact the patient and arrange the flight. If there is a succession of linked flights it is up to the pilot of the first flight to also contact the succeeding flight pilots and arrange the times and handoffs.

The pilot then does the flight. You are PIC, so on the day of, if there is a weather condition or some other safety issue it is up to you to decide whether to cancel the flight. The patients know that they must have a backup plan. I have been lucky, I have not had to cancel in some 30+ flights. 

There is a charitable deduction for the cost of the flight, but don't think you are going to save big on your taxes. The IRS is stingy when it comes to in-kind contributions to charity.

In many cases the patient has no transportation at the end of the flight. I always ask, and if they don't I wrangle an airport courtesy car and take them to their appointment myself. Most of us do.  

The health issues are varied. I have flown many cancer patients, as young as 6 and as old as 72, brain, pancreatic, breast, and a couple of others.  Often we wind up moving them back and forth for several flights while they go through chemo. My first patient was a young girl living on an island in Lake Superior who has cerebral palsy, I have also moved patients with disease names I never knew, Ehlers Danlos, autoimmune issues, you name it, if it is not contagious and they are ambulatory we fly them. 

AF gives you a Mission pin. You get one at 10 missions, 15 missions, 25, 50, 75, 100+. I wear mine on my blazer when I go out, most people have no idea what it is and most don't ask, but a few do. That, and knowing that you are helping someone, is your return. Someone mentioned that, on the pilot roster for a regional organization there will be a number of pilots who signed up but have never flown. And then there will be a small number who have flown a few hundred flights. I am not in the hundreds yet, but we have three pilots in the Minnesota Wing of AFC who are.

If you want to find your region, look on aircharitynetwork.org, it has the website links for all the regional member organizations. Over time you will meet pilots from everywhere. Click on your region to find out their rules and call them with questions, they would love to have you.

[Amelia]

OK, once again, (sigh) dear Michael (steingar) has to be reeled in. 
in my experience, the medical care in small towns can be superior. Small hospitals are very likely, these days, to be affiliated with or owned by big medical teaching facilities, with specialist staff showing up for weekly local office appointments. Those double-distilled hotshots are as close as a phone call or a webcam. There’s a helipad right out back, lighted and paved for emergency transfers, 20 smooth minutes to University Hospital Center. The local staff are very accessible, well-trained, board-certified, know their patients well, in an established relationship, and speak English as a first language.
Aviation content: the nearest Angel Flight-able airport is unlikely to be more than a half hour away. Two of our ER docs commute here by Mooney and Bonanza, barely ten rural minutes from the hospital they serve.. Compare and contrast with Saint Megahospital in a six-block cluster of mid-city high-rises.It may be a 25 minute hike from the parking garage! 

Small town superiority case in point: I had a sudden bad bellyache one long ago night in a very little town. My sleepy family doc listened to my complaint, called the local general surgeon at 12:30am, asked him to meet us at the tiny hospital ER. The anesthetist and on call surgery crew were notified. Knife drop was at 1:10 am. And within an hour I was thus cured of a rare and life-threatening ailment, before the big city ER would have even taken my temperature. 

Love my benighted and unfashionable backwater, both for easy, affordable, convenient flying and for excellent healthcare. Best of all worlds. View’s not bad, either.

[Bob - S50]

2 hours ago, jlunseth said:

The patients are checked at every medical appointment for COVID symptoms, and they mostly come from rural areas where there is no or very little COVID, so the chances are small, but the chances are not non-existent for any of us, anywhere. However, there are non-patient flights as well, with limited contact with others.  I have hauled blood and bone marrow (boxed up), and there are flights for mothers' milk, medical supplies to rural areas, disaster relief supplies and others. It would be helpful if those who are concerned about patient contact would pick up the non-patient flights, it would lift some of the burden on those of us who are willing to fly patients.

I should explain how this all works, I am getting some questions. It may vary from one regional Air Charity organization to another, so always check the region's requirements.

To be a volunteer command pilot you must have 250 hours of PIC time and 500 total hours, a PPL and an instrument rating. You need to carry $1 million in insurance. Congress passed a law (imagine that!) in 2018 limiting liability to the pilot's insurance). You do not need to own and aircraft but most do.  You must do an orientation, which is basically watching an AOPA webinar on charitable flying (WINGS credit) and reading the AF organization's manual. Once you have done an orientation, you do not need to do it again so long as you fly one mission every 24 months.  These are the AF Central (AFC) requirements, there are other more detailed requirements on their website (angelflightcentral.org). Other regional organizations may have other requirements.  

You do not need to be a Command Pilot to contribute. Command pilots can request another pilot to fly with them and AF will organize that. AF also needs "Ground Angels" who pick the passengers up at an airport and drive them to their appointment, and there are also Mission Assistants who can be non-pilots. Command Pilots can request an MA. Usually, W & B is the problem with a second or an MA, but I have handed off to pilots who are operating as two-person crews (of small aircraft).

Once on board, the AF organization receives the requests to fly a patient, either from a patient themself, but more often from a health care provider. They vet the patient for financial need and if the flight is accepted, they explain the rules to the patient. Max 50 lbs. in luggage for example. Flights are posted to an Internet bulletin board that gives some basic information, date of the flight, W & B information, general nature of the patient's health issue. Pilot's log on and request a flight, or if you want, a succession of linked flights. AF reviews and approves in short order.  

You then receive a Mission Itinerary. It provides among other things the contact information for the patient (or an organization, if, i.e., it is a tissue shipment). It is up to the pilot to contact the patient and arrange the flight. If there is a succession of linked flights it is up to the pilot of the first flight to also contact the succeeding flight pilots and arrange the times and handoffs.

The pilot then does the flight. You are PIC, so on the day of, if there is a weather condition or some other safety issue it is up to you to decide whether to cancel the flight. The patients know that they must have a backup plan. I have been lucky, I have not had to cancel in some 30+ flights. 

There is a charitable deduction for the cost of the flight, but don't think you are going to save big on your taxes. The IRS is stingy when it comes to in-kind contributions to charity.

In many cases the patient has no transportation at the end of the flight. I always ask, and if they don't I wrangle an airport courtesy car and take them to their appointment myself. Most of us do.  

The health issues are varied. I have flown many cancer patients, as young as 6 and as old as 72, brain, pancreatic, breast, and a couple of others.  Often we wind up moving them back and forth for several flights while they go through chemo. My first patient was a young girl living on an island in Lake Superior who has cerebral palsy, I have also moved patients with disease names I never knew, Ehlers Danlos, autoimmune issues, you name it, if it is not contagious and they are ambulatory we fly them. 

AF gives you a Mission pin. You get one at 10 missions, 15 missions, 25, 50, 75, 100+. I wear mine on my blazer when I go out, most people have no idea what it is and most don't ask, but a few do. That, and knowing that you are helping someone, is your return. Someone mentioned that, on the pilot roster for a regional organization there will be a number of pilots who signed up but have never flown. And then there will be a small number who have flown a few hundred flights. I am not in the hundreds yet, but we have three pilots in the Minnesota Wing of AFC who are.

If you want to find your region, look on aircharitynetwork.org, it has the website links for all the regional member organizations. Over time you will meet pilots from everywhere. Click on your region to find out their rules and call them with questions, they would love to have you.

There used to be a lot of bloodbank missions in Washington.  I have not seen one on the board since March.  If they still had those I'd do that.  I keep hoping.

As you said, every AF is different.  Check the requirements for the AF in your area.

For AF West, the minimum requirements are PPL, 250 PIC, 75 XC.  Or Commercial & 75 XC.  Or an ATP.  Current flight review and medical or basic med.  At least 18 years old.  $500k insurance and $100k/seat.  If renting, proof of a checkout with the people you are renting from.  No requirement for an instrument rating.

No mission pins as far as I know (I've done 75 but nothing since March).

Description of being assigned and flying a mission was excellent.

[jlunseth]

@amelia, trailboss & Bob-S50 thank you for your service. Bob, at 75 you are a king, or at least a prince of a guy.

Amelia, I grew up in small towns and my father, a retired cardiac surgeon who was with the group at the U of Mn that invented heart surgery, interned at a tiny town hospital in northern Minnesota.  I have had mostly good health care experiences where I am from, often better than the "big mill" experience.  At Angel Flight, at least in my experience, we most often are flying patients with very unique or intractable diseases, to specialists or to facilities that don't exist everywhere in the country. AF is often able to get an airline to donate a flight out of a major metropolitan airport, Southwest donates to AFC quite a bit, thanks to them. But Southwest does not fly to Jackson MN (for example). Sometimes we are flying patients over the top of several big towns to the one health care facility in the country that has specialists in a field, or that has an experimental, study-type program that might help the patient. But you have done it, I am sure you have seen it for yourself. 

[steingar]

1 hour ago, Amelia said:

OK, once again, (sigh) dear Michael (steingar) has to be reeled in. 
in my experience, the medical care in small towns can be superior. Small hospitals are very likely, these days, to be affiliated with or owned by big medical teaching facilities, with specialist staff showing up for weekly local office appointments. Those double-distilled hotshots are as close as a phone call or a webcam. There’s a helipad right out back, lighted and paved for emergency transfers, 20 smooth minutes to University Hospital Center. The local staff are very accessible, well-trained, board-certified, know their patients well, in an established relationship, and speak English as a first language.
Aviation content: the nearest Angel Flight-able airport is unlikely to be more than a half hour away. Two of our ER docs commute here by Mooney and Bonanza, barely ten rural minutes from the hospital they serve.. Compare and contrast with Saint Megahospital in a six-block cluster of mid-city high-rises.It may be a 25 minute hike from the parking garage! 

Small town superiority case in point: I had a sudden bad bellyache one long ago night in a very little town. My sleepy family doc listened to my complaint, called the local general surgeon at 12:30am, asked him to meet us at the tiny hospital ER. The anesthetist and on call surgery crew were notified. Knife drop was at 1:10 am. And within an hour I was thus cured of a rare and life-threatening ailment, before the big city ER would have even taken my temperature. 

Love my benighted and unfashionable backwater, both for easy, affordable, convenient flying and for excellent healthcare. Best of all worlds. View’s not bad, either.

Sorry, half of my pal's flights were from small town doctors getting it wrong.  Small sample, admittedly.  

[Amelia]

Most of my AF pax seem to live far from an airport with scheduled carriers. Often they’re cancer patients, severely immunocompromised, for whom a big aluminum tube ride would be ill-advised. Some are carrying a load of medical devices, pumps, O2, etc, that can’t be transported in the airline cheap seats. And some simply can not afford to pay for airline trips to the monthly follow-up appointments hundreds of miles from home. It is, I’m told, a blessing to these dear ones, to be whisked from home to little airport, directly to the ramp and waiting Mooney, to suburban airport to big hospital, bypassing all the delays, TSA intrusiveness, and crowds.
It is hard enough to be fighting for your life. It shouldn’t be harder than it has to be. I’m lucky and thankful to fly, and Angel Flight has been a rewarding excuse to do that. So many of my passengers have shared my pleasure in skimming over puffy clouds, my astonishment at a smooth landing. And they are gracious and understanding when weather beyond my chicken level forces a cancellation.

 

[gacoon]

8 hours ago, Bob - S50 said:

There used to be a lot of bloodbank missions in Washington.  I have not seen one on the board since March.  If they still had those I'd do that.  I keep hoping.

As you said, every AF is different.  Check the requirements for the AF in your area.

For AF West, the minimum requirements are PPL, 250 PIC, 75 XC.  Or Commercial & 75 XC.  Or an ATP.  Current flight review and medical or basic med.  At least 18 years old.  $500k insurance and $100k/seat.  If renting, proof of a checkout with the people you are renting from.  No requirement for an instrument rating.

No mission pins as far as I know (I've done 75 but nothing since March).

Description of being assigned and flying a mission was excellent.

I,ve been looking for blood missions too.  They must have curtailed the blood drives in WA 

[Nippernaper]

You need to carry $1 million in insurance. Congress passed a law (imagine that!) in 2018 limiting liability to the pilot's insurance).

I had not heard this before; can you share any details about this? The liability issues have been a concern for me, and if there really is a federal limit on liability for the pilot, that would change the calculus for me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Parker_Woodruff]

51 minutes ago, Nippernaper said:

 

I had not heard this before; can you share any details about this? The liability issues have been a concern for me, and if there really is a federal limit on liability for the pilot, that would change the calculus for me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I was unaware until this post, but that would explain why Angel Flight no longer requires to be Additional Insured on the aircraft owner's policy.  Now they just want to see proof of coverage.

[jlunseth]

@Nippernapper - There are two things that bear on your question.  First, I have copied and pasted Sec. 584 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 below, which is the liability limitation. Second, at least at AFC, every passenger, and every volunteer pilot, is required to sign a lengthy waiver before the flight. The pilot must then transmit the waiver prior to the flight. Usually we do this by asking the FBO to fax it, or scan and email. The objective is to get it in before you leave the ground, or at least leave it somewhere, where it can be found. It is long and legal, and probably varies from one regional organization to another, so it would be best for you to get it from your regional organization’s website if you want to see the language. I have never had a problem with getting one signed, that is one of the things AFC tells the passengers they will have to do before the flight is posted for pilots to pick up. Now the passengers are able to sign, scan, and send even before the day of the flight.

Here is  the 2018 Federal law:

(b) LIABILITY PROTECTION FOR PILOTS THAT FLY FOR PUBLIC BENEFIT.—Except as provided in subsections (c) and (e), no volun- teer of a volunteer pilot nonprofit organization that arranges flights for public benefit shall be liable for harm caused by an act or omission of the volunteer on behalf of the organization if, at the
time of the act or omission, the volunteer—
‘‘(1) was operating an aircraft in furtherance of the purpose
of, and acting within the scope of the volunteer’s responsibilities on behalf of, the nonprofit organization to provide patient and medical transport (including medical transport for veterans), disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, or other similar chari- table missions;
‘‘(2) was properly licensed and insured for the operation of the aircraft;
‘‘(3) was in compliance with all requirements of the Federal Aviation Administration for recent flight experience; and
‘‘(4) did not cause the harm through willful or criminal misconduct, gross negligence, reckless misconduct, or a con- scious, flagrant indifference to the rights or safety of the indi- vidual harmed by the volunteer.’’

[jlunseth]

On 7/31/2020 at 11:13 PM, gacoon said:

I,ve been looking for blood missions too.  They must have curtailed the blood drives in WA 

I am flying another one this week. They still exist. KFCM->KFAR to pick up the cargo, then KFAR->KBIL to deliver. If anyone is around the upper midwest and looking for one, I think we could really use help on this one. Being in ND, there are not alot of pilots to fly it and the distance is daunting for some. It happens every week, and I can’t do it every week myself. It is actually broken up into two missions, I just do both in one hop with a half a tank of fuel left. There is that Mooney thing again.

[jlunseth]

I should say one other thing. Everywhere I go on Angel Flights I am treated gracefully. Phillips 66 will issue a credit card application and they give a discount on fuel for Angel Flights. KFAR and many other FBO’s give discounts. I have never been charged ground fees at a Signature. 

The very first flight I took was a retired high school principal in chemo, wearing a headress, needing to go home from Chicago to West Virginia. I picked her up at Palwaukee. It was early winter and cold. I explained to her that the heater in the Mooney is aft, between the seats, and the footwells can get cold, did she have blanket or some extra clothing to keep her feet warm. She did not. The pilot of a busjet overheard this, and approached me out on the ramp when I was getting the plane ready. Come over to his plane, he suggested, because he might be able to help. He said that for his last flight they had bought some blankets that folded into pillow sacks for the passengers and they would not need them again, would I like one for my passenger. Sure. I still have that blanket and pillow sack, it is perfect for light load planes like ours (compared to a G5). His company had him sign up for Angel Flights but so far they had not authorized one. He was going to talk to them about that when he got home.  Just one pilot to another type of conversation. So my passenger was thankfully warm and cosy to SE Ohio where I handed her off to a pilot in a twin to take her home to West Virginia.

You get a unique flight number that you file in place of you tail number in your flight plan.   ATC will do just about anything for you, not that they don’t do that the rest of the time anyway if you are civil and professional. On that flight from Palwaukee ATC put us directly over O’Hare and then Midway at 4 or 5 thousand (don’t remember exactly) rather than route us out around Chi Bravo, what a view! Don’t see that every day. Made the patient happy.

[Nippernaper]

Thanks [mention]jlunseth [/mention] great info. I found my local org and am filling out the pilot application now.


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[jlunseth]

Thank you for pitching in. If you need any help let me know.

[Ross Taylor]

This is interesting and something I'd like to do.  I wondered about the Mooneys in this application, considering the access.  My MIL has MS and needs a walker...I'm pretty convinced that I'll need to rent a Cessna to take her for a ride...I can't see her getting up on the wing and into our E.  Does Angel Flight do a good job of matching patient/passenger limitations to the aircraft used?

[Bob - S50]

6 minutes ago, Ross Taylor said:

This is interesting and something I'd like to do.  I wondered about the Mooneys in this application, considering the access.  My MIL has MS and needs a walker...I'm pretty convinced that I'll need to rent a Cessna to take her for a ride...I can't see her getting up on the wing and into our E.  Does Angel Flight do a good job of matching patient/passenger limitations to the aircraft used?

All passengers are supposed to be ambilitory, some more than others. I carry a 2 step ladder. YOU do the matching passenger to plane by choosing which mission you want. I consider date, time, location, individual weight, total weight, number of people, and reason for travel.

[ArtVandelay]

All passengers are supposed to be ambilitory, some more than others. I carry a 2 step ladder. YOU do the matching passenger to plane by choosing which mission you want. I consider date, time, location, individual weight, total weight, number of people, and reason for travel.

Unless you remove the copilot seat, kinda tough to be the last one to enter the plane.