The mission description from Angel Flight was:
SUBSEQUENT TRIP REQUEST: (5th & 6th Angel Flights)A 53 year old lady from Charleville has recently been diagnosed with bowel cancer.
She requires travel to Tweeds Heads every four weeks for her oncology appointments as treatment is not available in Charleville.
Dear Jens,One cannot help but become a knight in shining Beechcraft armour.I am an Angel Flight Damsel in distress looking for two knights in shining armour to take a lovely lady and her husband from Charleville to Coolangatta on Wednesday 11th and Coolangatta to Charleville on Saturday 14th.
If you can help PLEASE contact me URGENTLY!
Having to get Jennifer and her husband Barry to an appointment at 2pm after some six hours of flying, I needed to get airborne no later than 7:30. So to save myself having to
get up too early, I went out the airfield the evening before to fill it up and hope that no one would steal any fuel during this night. Since the weather
was clement, I also left the cover off - both these actions would save me some twenty odd minutes...
As it turned out I was up before the alarm went off at 6:15 and was at the airfield early, got the preflight done and charged off into the wide blue yonder about half an hour early.
There were no clouds about, and with air traffic controllers at Amberley and Oakey were still safely tucked into bed I had completely unimpeded progress out west and a nice 10 odd knot tail wind to boost. I arrived at 9:30 for an 11:00 departure, called Jennifer and Barry to let them know that I'd be ready when they'd be ready. I still had plenty of time to pump some 140l of AvGas onboard.
Jennifer and Barry's daughter brought them out to the airfield and helped carry the bags to the aeroplane. It did not take long to get them settled into the back seat
and we got going about half an hour early again.
Climbing to 9,000' we encountered some minor chop, but once above 5,000' we were in smooth conditions all the way. Jennifer spent most of the time asleep, while Barry had a look out the window.
As we got to about 60 miles west of the Gold Coast I was asked by air traffic control to maintain maximum speed to the field for sequencing purposes. Shortly later I heard the same controller instructing two 737s to slow down for sequencing purposes.
So we had a fast descent, with 160knots indicated and I was asked to cut the final corner to go onto final, where I found myself with a clean airframe at 160 knots at about 2,500' and two miles to run. Nothing for it, but chop the power, nose up, wait for 153knots to show up, drop the gear, wait for the airspeed to decay to flap speed and feed in the flaps. So following a very steep descent, we touched down on the runway. As we taxied off, I saw a 737 was on final behind us.
I was about to call Earth Angel Diane Driscole to let her know of our early arrival, when she turned into the carpark, ready to take Jennifer and Barry into town.