The mission description from Angel Flight was:
INITIAL TRIP REQUEST:Another Angel Flight pilot, Keith Bedford from the Sunshine Coast, was originally scheduled to fly this as his maiden mission.A 43 year old man from Charleville has been recently diagnosed with cancer and is currently receiving ongoing treatment at the PA Hospital.
He is in a palliative condition and would like to travel home to Charleville for one week to see his family.
However, a close inspection of his aircraft on the Friday before revealed some major damage to undercarriage and wing that precluded him from getting airborne. So Angel Flight Coordinator Kylie Grünes asked me whether I would be prepared to skive off work and swan off to the west whilst Keith was busy meeting up with his insurance assessor. Needless to say (why else would you be reading this?), I readily agreed.
This flight was a first for me too: while I had stopped of in Charleville plenty of times before, it had always been just to refuel, but never actually to drop anyone off or pick anyone up.
As I arrived at the airfield with plenty of time to awaken aeroplane and get ready for the trip, I noticed a trio of slightly lost looking people in the
car park. Upon questioning these turned out to be David, his friend Mathew and Mathew's mum. While in Brisbane for his on-going treatments David is staying with
Mathew's family, and Mathew accompanied him on this trip.
They were still hungry, so I sent them off to the cafe while I prepared the aircraft. Some 20 minutes later we all re-convened in the passenger lounge, farewelled Mathew's mum and headed to the aircraft.
Shunning the pilot, both Mathew and David sat down in the back, intent on watching some or other movie on their portable DVD-player. We got airborne a few minutes before 8:00 and headed out west. Conditions were smooth as we climbed to our cruising altitude of 10,000'. The only squawk being a problem with the transponder. This eventually cleared itself just as we were leaving radar coverage about 100nm west of Oakey. The "boys" in the back, in the mean time, had given up trying to watch their DVD as the 285 horses forward of the fire wall were way too noisy, drowning out the movie, even with the ear plugs under the headsets.
We arrived at Charleville just after 11:30, taxied up to South West Air Services, where David's mate Scott, a pilot with the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), based at Charleville, was waiting for us. He wound up having to play luggage porter, as both David and Mathew made a mad dash to the facilities, leaving Scott and me in charge of the bags.
Scott soon had them underway toward the local school where David was keen to meet up with his four boys aged twelve, nine, six and six.
While they headed into town I had the tanks replenished to capacity, adding 153 litres of AvGas. I got going again reasonably quickly and was airborne at 10:55. My
flight back home, this time at 9,000' soon ran into some building thunderstorm clouds, so I had to do a few zig zags to stay clear of them. The transponder worked
a treat, and I was soon on final at Archerfield. I touched down at 1:10pm, managing to tie down the aeroplane just before a thunderstorm drenched the airfield.