Flying Supplies into Haiti

March 1st, 2010. Filed under: Cross Country, Doing Good.

Ground crews help unload needed supplies

There have been thousands of flights bringing in tens of thousands of pounds of relief supplies. The vast majority of those flights are done by a private individual with his or her own plane. One of those pilot/owners is Joe Budge from Annapolis Maryland. Joe recently came back from spending a week of hauling supplies from Ft. Lauderdale and Nassau to Haiti. Here’s his story.

Day 1: Saw an announcement on the internet that a non-profit in the Bahamas had organized an all-volunteer general aviation supply train for Haitian relief. Bahamas Methodist Habitiat had organized a similar effort several years ago when Eleuthra was devastated by hurricane. They were re-activating it in the wake of Port-au-Prince’s devastating earthquake. Spent several days trying to get through to them via email without luck. Finally called the FBO in Nassau where they’re basing the effort and talked to Abraham. He said “get down here!”

Flew to Ft. Lauderdale Executive (FXE), with a fuel stop at Grand Strand (CRE) in North Myrtle Beach. Had to wait to take off at Grand Strand as a V-22 Osprey was practicing low approaches. An interesting sight. “Caution wake turbulence.” No kidding!

Flying in middle and south Florida was interesting. From Orlando south there were a lot of training flights in progress. Being students they’re easily confused in the first place. On top of which many of them were English-challenged. My hat’s off to the controllers as I didn’t understand half of what those guys were saying.
Left the plane with Banyan in Ft. Lauderdale. They provided good service, have a killer pilot shop, and waived ramp fees since I was on the Haitian mission.

Day 2: Picked up a load of medical supplies next morning at the Haitian Relief hangar – a corporate hangar for Windsor Jet which the company has turned over to the effort. New Hope Ministries is organizing materials collection in Ft. Lauderdale and sending planes that can make it directly from there to Haiti. (I don’t fit in that category.) They’re also filling up any planes that show up for Bahamas Methodist Habitat. Flew the load down to Nassau. I was too late to go on down to Haiti, so went back to Ft. Lauderdale for another load. The second load was food, including 200 lbs of rice.

Day 3: Not much in the way of briefing information for Haiti. Fortunately BMH had put together a briefing sheet which gave the essentials on the airports we’ll be flying to. Including the coordinates as only Port au Prince and Cap Haitien are in our GPS databases. Talked to some pilots who’d been down there already – it’s cowboy country. Got our flight assignments from Cameron. Rather than unload the supplies from my plane Cameron sent me right on to Cap Haitien. That’s on the north coast. 3+ hours flying each way – which is well within the plane’s range except there’s no fuel in Haiti and 6 hours is *not* within range. So I stopped in Exuma for fuel both going and coming. No problems. But I am now a leading expert in filling out customs forms! Good grief, I may have to come home early because the plane can’t carry that much paper.

The Cap Haitian leg was interesting. For whatever reason Haiti was not doing any IFR today. It was fun to listen to the jets being told they’d have to go VFR and asking “What do we do, there are clouds down there?” Not a big deal – there were lots of holes in ‘em.

Turning final into Cap Haitian

Very glad I had a traffic detector, though. The Cap Haitian airport itself was a complete zoo. Lots of planes coming and going. The working part of the airport has pretty good security so no safety worries. It was interesting to see the big steel gate on the road in – solid barrier with a line of eyes peering over it. Didn’t get out of the airport itself. Got interviewed by a UN journalist & photographer. What I could see of town looked pretty normal – that area was far enough away from the quake that it didn’t have severe damage. But a large chunk of town near the end of the runway was devastated & in the water – probably from a former hurricane. The shells of the buildings were standing in shallow water – no roofs. No debris, either, which means it was probably not recent. Grateful to have a comfy bed tonight!
After parking in Cap Haitien there was no one to greet me. Not surprising as the place was bustling. So I kind of wandered around until I saw a door that had someone with a badge. That turned out to be the place. A helpful gentleman took me in tow and ushered me through immigration, emigration, and filing a flight plan. (He hung around until he got a tip.) He and his cohorts were quite gruff characters. Then hooked up with a representative from the church to unload my supplies.

Departing Cap Haitien I had my first ever for-real aborted takeoff. Some bozo had forgotten to lock the plane’s cockpit door.

Fuel stop in Exuma again on the way back. Departed Exuma IFR as I’d be flying after sunset. VFR isn’t allowed after sunset in the Bahamas. A Beech 1900 was waiting for takeoff ahead of me. All his exhaust set off my CO detector. Cough!

Day 4: Flew to Les Cayes on the south shore of Haiti today. It was a longer trip – so my fuel stop was in Providenciales (“Provo”) in the Turks & Caicos. That place was complete pandemonium as it’s the closest refuelling stop to Haiti that still has avgas, jet fuel, and takes credit cards. The flight itself was uneventful.
Les Cayes is on a plain so the area is agricultural. Lots of well-tended fields with little houses dotted all around. The airport was about 5 miles from town – which I saw in the distance but never got close to. The airport building itself is a really cool old-fashioned style tropical waiting room. Unlike Cap Hatien there were not a lot of people around other than the officials and the missionary I was supposed to deliver the medical supplies to. He’s coordinating delivery of the supplies to the four different hospitals in the area. Once unloaded a gaggle of kids lined up at the airport fence calling “give me food.” Two UN soldiers (from Urugay) came out to guard my plane while I was there.
Aircraft communications in Haiti are fairly spotty. In theory Port au Prince Control is supposed to be talking to you as soon as you cross the border. That may have been possible pre-earthquake, but it’s certainly not now. At normally aspirated altitudes you can’t hear them until you’re across the mountains and in the Gulf. They don’t have radar anyway, so there doesn’t seem to be much point in talking to them unless you’re going into the Port au Prince Control Zone. If you insist on the formality, aircraft at higher altitudes will relay. Except for my first day, IFR operations were back in action. And Cap Haitien tower has about a ten-mile range – if you’re on their side of the hill. And that is the sum total of aircraft communications in Haiti. Oh – except for the Cubans are using the Les Cayes CTAF frequency for an FM radio station.

Providenciales doesn’t have radar either. All of their approach and departure operations are based on position reports. It was fascinating to see the position reporting system in action as we rarely encounter it in the States.
It is equally fascinating to see how they handle runway operations. With the exception of Nassau, all of the airports are single-runway with no parallel taxiway. That means everyone is taxiing back – either for takeoff, after landing, or both. The tower has to be adroit at spacing aircraft out to allow time for that. One aircraft coming into Provo got pissed when he was told to hold as there was only one other aircraft (me) on final. What he didn’t know was there were four other aircraft lined up to take off. Apparently Port au Prince is the same way. It’s been a huge factor in getting traffic in and out of there.

Long day – didn’t get back to Nassau until 9 PM. Fortunately the kind people of Providenciales had prepared mountains of sandwiches for the pilots flying through on the relief effort so that accounted for lunch and dinner. In fact, such donations were breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of my time traveling to Haiti. Loaded up the plane for tomorrow before heading for the hotel.

Day 5: Flew back down to Cap Haitien again today. Flew around overhead a bit before I landed. There were piles of supplies and tents by the side of the parking ramp, dropped off by airplanes much bigger than mine. The big challenge in these towns is that everyone who can is leaving Port au Prince and going to family elsewhere. “Elsewhere” barely had enough food for the people who lived there in the first place, let alone the refugees. Word is the population of every town outside of Port au Prince has doubled in the last week. And the hospitals are more than overflowing because all the medical patients that could be have been evacuated.

The same gruff gent as before led me through immigration and flight planning. For emigration this time he took me into the airline waiting room where the official is. The waiting room was chock-full of Haitians hoping to get out. The second I walked into the room a UN official with lists in hand came hustling over to make sure I had a ride. It must not be fun to spend the night there. Just before departing I started to do a run-up and then asked myself “Why?” Pretty much as long as the engine was running I was leaving anyway… 30-knot plus headwinds on the way down today, so I arrived in Cap Haitien with less fuel than planned. In theory I’d make up for it some of that with tailwinds on the way back to Exuma. It was easy enough to come back through Provo, however, so I did. Provo is slightly off-course, but stopping there only adds 30 miles to the trip (each way.) The guiding principal in this kind of island flying is to arrive at your destination with sufficient fuel on board to make it to another island that has fuel plus normal reserves. At night you’re going to want them to have fuel and lights. That way if something closes
your destination’s one runway (a plane with a flat tire, for example) you don’t need to go swimming or set down somewhere with no fuel to get back in the air. Fuel is life.

Once back in the air, Miami Center was sending all US-bound planes coming out of Haiti over to a special frequency. “They have a couple of questions for you.” “They” turned out to be FEMA. They were asking all planes for the number of US and non-US citizens on board and any medical conditions. They wanted to know what kind of medical services would be needed on arrival back in the States.

Day 6: Went down to the hotel office at 6:30am (when they open) so they could call a cab to the airport. Several other pilots from the relief effort were standing around doing the same. When I show up one of them says “It *is* groundhog day!” It hasn’t been long in real terms, but all of us (a) have completely lost track of day-of-the-week, and (b) know the date by heart as we’ve filled it out on umpteen customs forms. Weird.

Flew medical supplies down to Les Cayes again today. The clouds over the mountains were much denser today with much more haze underneath – you couldn’t see through to the other side. So I went over the top and arrived overhead the airport at 8,500 feet with some descending to do. Did a big wide spiral down over the town, which looks like an interesting port town. Large tent city filling up half of one of the parks.

Arrival and unloading at the airport was routine. Departure was something else again. Turned the ignition key to “Start” and nothing happened. Nothing. Uh Oh! Tried a few more times – no luck. How am I going to enjoy spending the night in Haiti? Got out and pulled the prop through a couple of times (the aviation equivalent of hitting it with a hammer) and then the key started it right up. Suspect it’s the starter relay as there wasn’t a click or power drain or anything. (It did the same again in Provo, but only once.) Not stopping anyplace else that doesn’t have a mechanic.
On my way out of Les Cayes there was another plane coming it – a much fancier and faster plane. They turned around and left, still beating me to the refueling stop in Providenciales. One of their passengers was wearing scrubs from my local hospital.. Talk about your small world department! He was an orthopedic surgeon who’d been down there for a week, using the supplies I’d been bringing in. A very nice punctuation mark to the end of my trip down there.
This is my last day of flying for Bahamas Methodist Habitat. It is absolutely stunning the number of people and organizations who are pitching in to make this work. All the FBO’s I’ve stopped at from Ft. Lauderdale Executive on are contributing: some are waiving fees, some are giving discounts on gas, some are donating space. There are churches, Rotaries, and other groups throughout the southeast and Bahamas that are contributing supplies. Of course there are the pilots themselves. And let’s not forget the churches and missionaries in Haiti distributing the aid.