Float Plane Operations

Last week I got a chance to visit our float plane base in Central Kalimantan.  My good friend Jason Pratt and his wife Robyn serve there, along with their two little girls.  Because of all the smoke in Central Kalimantan, which is an annual event due to the slash and burn method of clearing the crops there, they had been here in Tarakan for the past month or so to get away from the smoke.  Since Jason is all alone down there right now (well, the only pilot/mechanic), I returned to Central Kalimantan with him to help with some maintenance on the planes.

Their operations down in Palangkaraya (the capital of Central Kalimantan) are very different from our wheel planes in Tarakan.  I wanted to highlight some of the things I found interesting from this "landlubber" pilot perspective.

As the only pilot/mechanic on the program (for now...the Cannon's are due back next month), he has a lot of responsibilities, many more than I do in Tarakan.  Here he is leading a meeting with the Indonesian staff after being gone for a month:



There's always a chance you might drop a tool in the water, so be careful!  Thankfully, with their new massive floating hangar, doing maintenance on the planes is MUCH easier these days.  Before, they had to do maintenance while the airplane was tied up to a simple dock.  Still, a float plane is really half boat, half airplane.





They get numerous flight requests for sick patients, and one popped up the morning we got back.  With the visibility in smoke still pretty bad (it was only a mile that morning), we almost didn't get to do the flight.  Thankfully, it improved enough we could take this 10 year old girl to a better hospital in nearby Banjarmasin.  She had been involved in a motorcycle accident, and her injuries were pretty severe:







Even taking off on the long, wide, river in front of the floating MAF hangar presents challenges I'm not used to:  there are floating logs and debris all over the place, boats zipping up and down the river, and of course the current of the river itself.  As we began our takeoff "roll," Jason is calling out logs and boats he sees along the way.  "There's a log, we'll pass right over it...there's a boat, we'll be off the water before we pass him."  Our landing strips don't change that much except for the wetness...they're basically either dry or wet.  The rivers these guys are landing on are constantly changing.  And I didn't even get to go into any of the more challenging places.

Here he's straining to see through the smoky haze.  Thankfully there are no mountains to run into:



After landing at our airstrips, we simply taxi in and shut down.  For a floatplane, the hardest part may be yet to come.  Even though the river we landed on was wide and long, the current was very choppy, the wind strong, and the dock small.  Docking here was pretty challenging but Jason handled it like a veteran.  Getting this patient out was also a challenge, and made me appreciate the large double doors of the 206 (he's flying a Cessna 185, which only has a single passenger door on each side):

Jason is also a big WWII buff, and his authentic 1945 Willy's Jeep is his pride and joy.  The first thing he did when we walked into his house at 10pm, after being in Tarakan for a month, was check on his baby.  He let me drive it for a little bit, and I gotta say I think an airplane is easier to fly than driving that Jeep.  You're sure to appreciate power brakes and rack-and-pinion steering after driving a WWII Jeep.  Jason also has a bunch of Jeep buddies he hangs out with, which is a neat ministry in itself.  

I've never seen a vehicle that needed its hood opened so much:

Notice he's sitting on the left side, which is opposite to every other car in Indonesia (we drive on the left side of the road here):

Their little girl Samantha, who called me "Uncle Steve" the whole time (after Steve Persenaire, our new Program Manager who just moved here after being in Palangkaraya for several years):

Jason, Robyn, and their two little girls Abby and Samantha:

With their two Cessna 185's on floats, they're able to serve several pastors doing ministry upriver, fly out numerous sick and injured patients, and serve the communities living along the many rivers in Central Kalimantan.  It was pretty cool getting to see their operations!