Bogging in Dimanbil

After a restful holiday, we returned to Mt Hagen, MAF’s HQ town, to do our 3-monthly grocery shop before we could head home to Telefomin. Unfortunately, we had to wait 2 extra days in Hagen as our plane needed a bit more work during its routine maintenance with the Engineering department. Disappointing, as we were missing Koda, but we are super grateful that our Engineering team are so good at their job and keep our planes very safe for Ryan and our other pilots to fly!

Eventually we made it home to Telefomin, and to our two new pilot neighbour families (it is still a novelty to have international MAF neighbours again!). The next day, Ryan had a planned training day to check our next door neighbour, Capt. Richard, into some airstrips which he hasn’t flown to before.

The first airstrip Richard needed to be checked to was Dimanbil, which Ryan opened 2 years ago. Sadly, part of the airstrip is still a bit boggy and whilst trying to park before unloading the cargo, one of the aircraft tyres sank into the airstrip.

Ryan spent the next 5 hours working with the community to dig the plane out. A true Bush Pilot, he wasn’t shy of getting down in the mud to do everything possible, on a remote and isolated airstrip, to dig his plane out! With a lot of help from the community, they managed to pull the plane out of the mud. Sadly, for safety reasons, they could not take the passengers with them as they could not be certain that they wouldn’t get stuck again whilst taxiing before take-off.

They made it back to Telefomin that day (which is a small miracle in itself!) and thankfully there was no damage to the plane, it just needed a good wash, which our Base Team were happy to do, as they got their second plane and two of their three pilots back!!!

Photos courtesy of Capt. Richard.

Ryan leading by example, not afraid to get muddy to dig out his plane!