Strange Last Day…
Today was supposed to be Ryan’s last day flying before we go on Sabbatical, but unfortunately, for the first time in 10 years of flying in PNG, Ryan was rostered to fly both yesterday and today, but the “weather” stopped him from getting off the ground the whole day!
It’s common for fog in the morning in Tele or rain overnight at the destination to delay the usual planned 8am take off. Smoke sometimes causes delays or diversions during dry season, but it hasn’t caused Ryan to loose a whole day of flying in the past 10 years! And we haven’t heard of any otter pilots having that problem before this month either.
Some friends who served with MAF in PNG for 25 years, recently messaged and said they experienced similar issues with smoke back in the El Niño in 1997! Then most MAF flights were cancelled for almost a month.
We are planning to leave Telefomin and fly to MAF’s HQ in Mt Hagen on Wednesday, in 4 days time. Please pray that God sends a massive rain to wash away the smoke, clear the air, fill up the water tanks, put out the bush fires and water the gardens before then! If the smoke doesn’t clear, we’re not going anywhere…
Ryan went to the base to prepared his plane to fly both yesterday and today. We are very aware of the many needs to fly food into remote communities right now, due to the extreme dry season. But Ryan can’t fly if it’s not safe, and he didn’t have the visibility to safely get off the ground.
We even heard the Australian Air Force Hercules circling over head mid-morning, but they were unable to get in. We don’t know the reason for their visit, but they were likely carrying emergency food rations for the hospital or school.
No sign of the “crocodile tail” mountain range which shows the Telefomin pilots that they have a safe range of visibility. Ryan only needs to see a slight outline to be able to take off, but we could barely see the construction work camp of the other side of the road at the bottom of the airstrip.
Even without doing any flying, Ryan still has to do a little paperwork.
Once Ryan ran out of time to do any flights with still no sign of the smoke clearing, he went to the base the put the airplane to bed. Shiv & Koda came too for another walk in the smoke.
After one final check, Ryan sends a WhatsApp message to the central operations office in Mt Hagen to give them the bad news that the visibility has not improved and a second day of flights are completely cancelled, much to the passengers’ disappointments.
Ryan putting the exhaust cover in. This stops birds and other creatures from getting into the engine overnight and damaging the plane.
Locking up the cargo pods.
Just as we were about to head home, we noticed that the bush along the side of the bottom of the airstrip was on fire again, with visible flames and a large plume of smoke blowing right across the airstrip. The fire was only about 50-100m from the MAF Generator shed which serves as back-up power for both our Base and Pilot House 4. We pray the wind does not pick up and blow the fire closer to any MAF property. There’s no way to put it out if it gets too close, except grabbing some branches and trying to beat the fire.
