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MISSION 92 - BROKEN HILL / BANKSTOWN An Angel Flight Profile - Making a Difference "Mission
complete!" said pilot Kerry Delaney after 15 year old Rachel
and her mother Linda from Broken Hill were collected at Bankstown
airport on a recent rainy Sunday afternoon. Rachel
has the rare "brittle bones" disease and was required
at Westmead Children's Hospital for a periodic check up. Surface
travel from Broken Hill takes around 18 hours and is very uncomfortable
given her condition. The RPT flight is prohibitively expensive for
this family. Angel Flight helps people like Rachel by facilitating
private air transport and ground connections.
Other ATCs would be aware that approval is given for pilots to prefix their usual call sign with "Angel Flight" on first contact with each frequency. While this has no direct purpose operationally, it may have been in the back of ML Centre's mind when we encountered turbulence and needed a quick level change. This mission, and those I've helped with on the road, gave first-hand experience of the enormous benefit Angel Flight brings to the community (not to mention a new appreciation of new appreciation of single-pilot GPS NPA workload). Angel
Flight has operated in Australia since April 2003 and completed
over 100 missions. More information including enquiries for volunteers
can be found on this website. Rory
Delaney
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Kerry
is one of several hundred Angel Flight pilots - including some Airservices
staff - who volunteer their time and aircraft for each "mission"
(as Angel Flight likes to call them). This was Kerry's second mission
with his part-owned Bonanza. From my interest in Angel Flight as
a ground transport volunteer, I decided to don a terry-towelling
hat and join my father Kerry on this trip.