On Monday 6 July I am leaving Mareeba for 6 months to take up a relief pilot role in Timor Leste.
This has come about rather quickly: I was only asked on 3 June, i.e. exactly one month ago today!
The MAF Timor Leste programme normally has three expat pilots and one expat programme manager (aka country director), but due to uncertainties around Covid some of them were evacuated to their home countries - and now are having difficulty getting back in. Apparently none of the pilots in the Arnhem Land programme were keen to go, so MAFI Asia-Pacific then asked if anyone at the Mareeba flight training centre would be able and willing to go. Since we have a reduced student roll at the moment (again, due to Covid) we agreed to send one of our instructors until January, when we will have our next student intake.
MAF is contracted to provide air transport for the national ambulance service in Timor Leste. That means that we fly a lot of medevacs there - an average of about 6 a week. The remainder of the flying is primarily charter flights for the government and the many NGOs operating in the country. I will be flying a GA8, which is the same type of aircraft we used for line pilot standardisation and that I recently ferried back from Arnhem Land.
I don't know entirely what to expect, only that God has already prepared the way for me. The opportunity has His fingerprints all over it - the timing, the duration, the relatively small size and low complexity of the flying programme... It will be extremely useful experience for wherever I end up going after my time in Mareeba comes to an end.
A couple of photos from pilot maintenance training earlier this week:
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