The mission descriptions from Angel Flight was:
SUBSEQUENT FLIGHT REQUEST: (102nd Angel flight)I had previously carried Kayla on Mission 224 in December 2004, Mission 668 in November 2005 and Mission 975 in May 2006Fifteen year old Kayla from Chinchilla who had a failed kidney transplant and is now back on home dialysis.
However she still needs to receive medical treatment at the PA Hospital?s Dialysis Unit (Brisbane) three times per week.
Thus Karen Spillane, misson co-ordinator at Angel Flight, found herself in a fix, so after no doubt spending most of the day ringing all the responsible pilots she knows, eventually got to the bottom of her list and called me. I was only too happy to assist.
The weather was indeed rotten when I got up on the day and it appeared to be getting worse as the departure time approached. Chinchilla does not have an instrument approach and
therefore there are no weather forecast or reports for it available. Still interpolating the weather from the west at Roma and the east at Oakey seemed to indicate that we'd have
very low ceilings (about 600'). But the weatherman has been wrong before.
I called Kayla's companion, her gran Pamela, to discuss the situation, but she was already ahead of me. She asked me whether we'd be heading to Oakey or Chinchilla. A little non-plussed I replied that my intent was Chinchilla, but, if the weather did not allow a visual arrival we'd divert to Oakey. Pam said that that was just fine and gave me instructions on whom to contact on what phone number and at what time at Oakey so that we could be escorted off the base (Oakey is an army air base). I politely declined all the information, telling her we'd face that hurdle if we had to.
Getting the plane refuelled was no hassle as it appears that I was the customer for the day. During the hour before our departure there was not one other aircraft even moving at Archerfield.
Kayla and Pam were dropped off right on time by Earth Angel Sheena Dey, accompanied by her husband and her wide eyed 2 year old son.
The old hands quickly settled into the back seat, while I started the engine taxied out and did the run-ups. There being no other traffic around, the departure clearance was issued in record time with an initial heading in the right direction for a change.
We soon were swallowed by the clouds and climbed between cloud layers to our crusing altitude of 8,000'. Slowed down by strong headwinds we progressed at a leisurley 120 knot. As we approached Oakey, the undercast began to break up. By the time we got to Dalby it was gone and started get just a little scattered again by Chinchilla. I slipped below the scattered clouds and we had an uneventful landing at Chinchilla.
For a change, Kayla did not fall a sleep this time.
The weather again got progessively worse and I had to do an instrument approach into Archerfield in the dark. With low scud around it was interesting to say the least. But at 5:20pm the wheels splashed down on the rain-soaked runway.