Yesterday, when I read our flight schedule via email before going to work, we didn't have even one flight planned. I later learned to be leery of these kind of days.
Soon after I arrived to work we got a radio call from a village called Quenahueno to bring out an infant that was in bad shape, showing signs of advanced pnemonia. So Chad and I flew out to Quenahueno and brought the mother and her baby out, taking about 50 minutes of total flight time. When we arrived back in Shell, the baby and her mom were sent to the hospital in nearby Puyo for treatment.
Also upon arrival back in Shell, we found our flight day had just grown a lot longer. There were at least 3 more emergencies waiting for us to come and get them. In order to make the most of our time and resources, we also put some waiting people and cargo into the airplane for some nearby airstrips and Chad and I were airborne once again. About 30 minutes over the jungle and approaching our first stop, we decided to divert to our second stop because of the rain that was over our first stop. After a go around into the village called Washintza we finally got the approach and landing figured out the second time around. After unloading our cargo there in Washintza, we were off again to try for our first planned stop of Copataza. The rain had moved on at this point and we made it in just fine. We offloaded our cargo and people for Copataza and left empty for a strip called Achuar to begin the first of our medical evacs.
I hit the landing zone perfectly at Achuar and we stoped and loaded up our "patient." Because of some confusion in Shell, there wasn't a patient in Achuar to come out, but there was a man needing to come out, so we put him on. After an aborted takeoff because of lack of flying speed, we tried it again and finally the numbers looked better and we continued with the takeoff and were enroute to Iwia.
In Iwia we did have a patient waiting. It was a woman that possibly had a miscarriage and was still bleeding. So on she went and then we were off to Yuvientza.
In route to Yuvientza we recieved a radio call from Shell that there was yet another, even more serious patient in a village called Makuma. We determined that we still had room to pick up the patient in Yuvientza and Makuma, so we landed in Yuvientza and picked up the all to common snake bite victim. From Yuvientza we made the flight to Makuma and picked up a father and his infant boy who was the patient. For reasons unknown to Chad and I, the little boys anus had come out about 5cm. So, finally we were a full airplane and we were back in route to Shell.
For the 6 seats that we have in the 206, we had 7 people total inside. It is not uncommon to have 9-10 inside if the people are small. For the 2.7 hours of flying that I had yesterday, I made 9 landings, had 1 aborted landing, 1 aborted takeoff, fought through marginal weather and rain, and loved it all. No doubt my pulse rate was high at certain times because of workload and quick desicions that must be made. Between most of my stops, our flight legs were only about 4 minutes between airstrips. Things happen real quick when you are landing and taking off that quickly into what would be condidered by most anything but a runway. But that is the reason for the specialized checkout process that I am in, and the time MAF puts into it. It is also the reason that we are here, helping people that otherwise probably wouldn't have made it to see another day.
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