Flying for Life!
On Ryan’s first operational flying day on Monday he was able to do a Medical Evacuation (Medevac) Flight to get a teenage boy with an infected foot from Fuma to Rumginae Hospital. He was also in the right place at the right time to do another Medevac on Tuesday to help a woman having birthing difficulties to get from Suabi to Daru.
Almost 8 months after we left PNG to go on Home Assignment, Ryan is really grateful to get back in the cockpit and be useful for the people of PNG!
The MAF PNG Facebook page shared the pictures shown on this page, and the details, below:
Ryan’s First Day of Operational Flying!
This morning , Ryan Cole took off to the Western Province with training pilot, Mathias Glass for two overnights. They will be taking someone from the Rural Airstrip Agency (RAA) to do minor repairs on lawn mowers, deliver fuel for those mowers and encourage the locals who work for them at various bush airstrips which they support.
As a part of this routine operational flying, Mathias will be checking Ryan into some of the airstrips in the North Fly part of Western Province, and conducting Ryan’s Line Check. Once Ryan passes his Line Check he will then be clear to fly solo on the C208 Caravan again.
The weather was quite challenging today and not everything got accomplished as scheduled. However, the pilots were able to take a teenager to Rumginae Hospital who had severe and already infected burns on his left foot.
Please pray for the staff at Rumginae and at the remote health posts to care well for their patients.
Pray also for good weather across Western Province so our aircraft can deliver the service as scheduled. One of our Goroka based aircraft and pilot is currently also flying in the South Fly area.
A note from Dr Kevin on yesterday’s MAF plane landing at Rumginae:
Training pilot, Mathias (right) with Dr Kevin (left), at Rumginae (Rughaz).
“This afternoon I got a welcome phone call from MAF Hagen saying there was a plane coming with a patient who had had a fit & burnt his left foot in a fire (in Papua New Guinea fires can be indoors as that's the method for cooking).
He was burnt 3 months ago, and I have been having a worrisome time trying to bring him to Rughaz for the last three weeks.
Thankfully MAF was in the area and picked up the patient and flew direct to Rughaz.
At Rughaz when I heard the plane I walked to the airstrip and Sr Dadu said get the students to stretcher the patient. As a result, the students came and carries the patient to the ward.
The students brought the patient to the ward & I reviewed and cleaned and dressed the wound as the initial step.
Thank you to MAF for flying to save this teenagers life!”
