Bridget's MAF Journey: Week 1 in Timor-Leste

When any MAF pilot starts in a programme they start with CARA - country, area, route and airstrip - training. This usually comprises a week or two of observational flying in the right-hand seat, followed by any number of dual flights with a training pilot to learn the intricacies of each of the different airstrips. The Timor-Leste programme is quite small and so after a week I am nearly finished; there is only one airstrip that we haven't been to yet. This is just as well as the chief pilot who is training me, Marcus, is on a fairly tight timeframe to get back to Australia for various flight tests at the FTC (he is also a CASA examiner).

I'll write more about the airstrips themselves in a later post, but as far as a summary goes, here is what we did:

Monday - Two training flights to Baucau (circuits and GA8 airwork) and Atauro Island

Tuesday - Training flight to Lospalos which turned into a medevac back to Dili

Wednesday - Training flight to Viqueque which turned into a double medevac (two patients) back to Dili. Then a second training flight to Same

Thursday - Training flight to Suai, from where we were called to a medevac at Lospalos and then a second medevac at Atauro Island

Friday - Charter flight to Oecusse

As you can see, in addition to our training flights we also did 4 medevacs! While it was a little frustrating to keep getting interrupted, there were some major benefits: (a) getting to do some 'real' operational flying, (b) experience flying the aircraft when it is close to maximum weight, (c) cost saving for MAF as both legs of a medevac flight are paid by the Ministry of Health, even in the cases where we were already at the airstrip doing training.

Here are some pictures from the week.