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Mercy With Wings
Mercy with wings
Pacific Mission Aviation uses air ambulance as outreach tool
By Called and Sent Staff
MASBATE CITY, Philippines—The broken man on the gurney doesn’t know it, but he has just landed one of the toughest seats in the Philippines.
The seat is actually a stretcher inside a 1975 Britten Norman Islander flown by Pacific Missionary Aviation, formerly Flying Medical Samaritans. The man, 19-year-old John Glenn Papillera, was run down by a small truck the night before while walking across the street. Papillera’s friends say the driver was drunk at the time and was apprehended and jailed by police later that night.
The impact shattered Papillera’s right leg and left him with severe head injuries, including a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage, said Dr. C.H. Severino Bajar, his attending physician. Papillera’s plane ride today will take him to a hospital in Metro Manila, 380 km (236 miles) away, a facility better equipped to treat his multiple fractures.
As PMA pilot Malcolm Cleope stands atop the wings to refuel the Islander by hand, nine men struggle to keep Papillera’s IV bottle above him while easing him through the plane’s side door. Four of them, including Bajar, crowd into the back of the 10-passenger plane with Papillera, holding him down as he writhes semiconsciously.
Today’s flight is one of only about six air ambulance runs that PMA does each year as a non-profit extension of its everyday ministries (see Sidebar).
“It’s more like a service — they’re renting the airplane,” Cleope, 44, says on the way to Masbate (mahs-BAH-tay) from his home base of Manila, the Philippines’ capital. “This is outside the ministry. The underlying ministry keeps us going.”
That ministry includes church planting on several islands around the Philippines and Micronesia. PMA also runs an orphanage on the northern Philippine island of Mindoro. But getting to all those remote enclaves requires flying—lots and lots of it. Cleope says he has logged about 1,000 hours since he began flying in 1989.
It’s almost a two-hour ride back to Manila from Masbate. The twin-engine Islander is the only air ambulance that Cleope knows of in the Philippines with a metal stretcher clamped into the floor. And while he does charge for expenses (today’s flight is costing Papillera’s family $1,100 USD), Cleope says offering a non-profit service gets the word out about PMA to people who might not otherwise encounter a missionary.
“This is one of those silent features,” Cleope says as he takes the plane up to 9,500 feet on the return trip. “A lot of people remember a good medi-vac [medical evacuation] trip and call us. We might not be able to share the Gospel right away, but somehow, we plant seeds.”
As he approaches Manila’s domestic airport, the ever-time-conscious Cleope is even more so. Because of long fuel lines at the airport (“They don’t consider emergencies,” he quips), the flight took off 30 minutes late. Now, about 20 minutes outside of Manila, the grim faces of the Papillera party behind Cleope match the weather in front of him—three thunderstorms, one to the left and two dead ahead.
To avoid having to wait in a holding patter under IFR (instrument flight rules), Cleope requests visual flight rule (VFR) clearance from the Manila air traffic control tower. The tower grants it, telling him to stay at 9,000 feet but allowing him to fly at his own discretion. Cleope is relieved—flying under IFR puts you under the tower’s discretion and could get you backed up in a queue of planes trying to land, he explains.
Cleope decides to fly between the two storm columns in front of him. Circling the weather takes the plane a bit out of the way but avoids turbulence for his fragile passenger.
As the plane circles the storm and closes in on Manila, the tower puts Cleope under IFR. But knowing it’s an air ambulance run, the controller bumps him up in line.
Cleope lands the plane smoothly and taxis to the PMA hangar, only to find out that the ambulance that was supposed to meet them there is being held up by airport police for no apparent reason. Cleope shuts off the engines, waits for five tense minutes, then restarts the engines, thinking he will have to taxi to meet the ambulance. At the last moment, the ambulance rolls in.
An EMT crew helps unload Papillera onto a rolling stretcher. As they load him into the ambulance, Dr. Bajar says he thinks his patient will make it.
Cleope just shakes his head as things wind down.
“That’s part of the deal,” he says. “The police are sometimes dorks about it. I have to argue with them about things. “That’s a day in the life of a missionary pilot.”
Pacific Mission Aviation uses air ambulance as outreach tool
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A group of John Glenn Papillera's friends and family members load him into a Pacific Missionary Aviation airplane while pilot Malcolm Cleope (top right) refuels.
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MASBATE CITY, Philippines—The broken man on the gurney doesn’t know it, but he has just landed one of the toughest seats in the Philippines.
The seat is actually a stretcher inside a 1975 Britten Norman Islander flown by Pacific Missionary Aviation, formerly Flying Medical Samaritans. The man, 19-year-old John Glenn Papillera, was run down by a small truck the night before while walking across the street. Papillera’s friends say the driver was drunk at the time and was apprehended and jailed by police later that night.
The impact shattered Papillera’s right leg and left him with severe head injuries, including a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage, said Dr. C.H. Severino Bajar, his attending physician. Papillera’s plane ride today will take him to a hospital in Metro Manila, 380 km (236 miles) away, a facility better equipped to treat his multiple fractures.
As PMA pilot Malcolm Cleope stands atop the wings to refuel the Islander by hand, nine men struggle to keep Papillera’s IV bottle above him while easing him through the plane’s side door. Four of them, including Bajar, crowd into the back of the 10-passenger plane with Papillera, holding him down as he writhes semiconsciously.
Today’s flight is one of only about six air ambulance runs that PMA does each year as a non-profit extension of its everyday ministries (see Sidebar).
“It’s more like a service — they’re renting the airplane,” Cleope, 44, says on the way to Masbate (mahs-BAH-tay) from his home base of Manila, the Philippines’ capital. “This is outside the ministry. The underlying ministry keeps us going.”
That ministry includes church planting on several islands around the Philippines and Micronesia. PMA also runs an orphanage on the northern Philippine island of Mindoro. But getting to all those remote enclaves requires flying—lots and lots of it. Cleope says he has logged about 1,000 hours since he began flying in 1989.
It’s almost a two-hour ride back to Manila from Masbate. The twin-engine Islander is the only air ambulance that Cleope knows of in the Philippines with a metal stretcher clamped into the floor. And while he does charge for expenses (today’s flight is costing Papillera’s family $1,100 USD), Cleope says offering a non-profit service gets the word out about PMA to people who might not otherwise encounter a missionary.
“This is one of those silent features,” Cleope says as he takes the plane up to 9,500 feet on the return trip. “A lot of people remember a good medi-vac [medical evacuation] trip and call us. We might not be able to share the Gospel right away, but somehow, we plant seeds.”
As he approaches Manila’s domestic airport, the ever-time-conscious Cleope is even more so. Because of long fuel lines at the airport (“They don’t consider emergencies,” he quips), the flight took off 30 minutes late. Now, about 20 minutes outside of Manila, the grim faces of the Papillera party behind Cleope match the weather in front of him—three thunderstorms, one to the left and two dead ahead.
To avoid having to wait in a holding patter under IFR (instrument flight rules), Cleope requests visual flight rule (VFR) clearance from the Manila air traffic control tower. The tower grants it, telling him to stay at 9,000 feet but allowing him to fly at his own discretion. Cleope is relieved—flying under IFR puts you under the tower’s discretion and could get you backed up in a queue of planes trying to land, he explains.
Cleope decides to fly between the two storm columns in front of him. Circling the weather takes the plane a bit out of the way but avoids turbulence for his fragile passenger.
As the plane circles the storm and closes in on Manila, the tower puts Cleope under IFR. But knowing it’s an air ambulance run, the controller bumps him up in line.
Cleope lands the plane smoothly and taxis to the PMA hangar, only to find out that the ambulance that was supposed to meet them there is being held up by airport police for no apparent reason. Cleope shuts off the engines, waits for five tense minutes, then restarts the engines, thinking he will have to taxi to meet the ambulance. At the last moment, the ambulance rolls in.
An EMT crew helps unload Papillera onto a rolling stretcher. As they load him into the ambulance, Dr. Bajar says he thinks his patient will make it.
Cleope just shakes his head as things wind down.
“That’s part of the deal,” he says. “The police are sometimes dorks about it. I have to argue with them about things. “That’s a day in the life of a missionary pilot.”
© 2007 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.