Matt and Becki Dillingham

A Typical Day

One church asked us if I could outline 'an average day' at work. Unlike airline flying, our schedule is pretty unpredictable, with routes often changing at the last minute. The day that I described for them was in January and I had a flight which followed a similar routine to the majority of flights in the small aircraft. We thought we would share it with you too:

4.20 am – my alarm goes off, time to get up and get ready for the day

5.10 am – go by motorcycle to the main airport terminal to file my flight plans for the day. A flight plan is required for every leg of the flight and must be filed at least 1 hour before take-off. Today’s take-off is scheduled for 6.20am.

5.20 am – arrive at the flight planning office to drop off the flight plans. I give it to the finance department first and then to the flight scheduling department who sign and sta
mp it and give me a copy. I also collect the weather reports for the day.

5.35 am – arrive at the MAF hanger and start the flight preparation. This involves downloading the latest NOTAM’s (Notice to Air Men) to check if there are any restrictions affecting my flight that day, then checking that I have the correct paperwork for the flight (kindly prepared the day before by our Flight Ops department). I then give the aircraft a visual inspection, checking everything is where it should be and there are no nicks in the propeller, loose screws or flat tyres etc.

6.00 am – the passengers arrive. They are weighed together with their bags. For light aircraft, making sure you are within your maximum take-off and landing weights is critical, especially for a flight like today's, as it will be a 4 hour round trip and there is no fuel in Bemana. The maximimum allowed weight for the passengers and their luggage is 210kg.  The aircraft can take 3 passengers (70kg each) but today there are only two passengers, which is fortunate as they will need to take luggage for their 3-day stay. They also want to take supplies to the people in Bemana however and they exceed their weight allowance. Time is spent re-packing what is essential for this trip, and deciding what can be brought down on the next flight. The bags are weighed and re-weighed until they are within the limits.

6.20 am – The passengers are enjoying a coffee while the ground crew fuel the aircraft. We need enough fuel for the flight plus at least a 1.5 hours reserve, but as it is rainy season we will take extra if we can. As extra fuel means less weight available to the passengers, we can’t work out how much fuel we will take until the passengers have arrived and have been weighed. The bags are loaded into the aircraft and strapped in.

Aircraft prepared for flight

6.35am – the passengers are loaded and I give them a safety briefing, covering what to do in an emergency, how to use the air vents, and where we store the sick bags!

6.40am – we are ready to go. We pull the aircraft out of the hanger and I do one final walk around the aircraft to check the fuel caps are closed, chocks are removed and everything is as it should be. Before starting the engine we pray for the flight and the work the team will do while in Bemana.

6.42am - ‘’Clear Prop’’ – I start the engine, it needs to warm for at least a minute before we can taxi, so the time is used to set up the GPS, then we taxi up to the ramp and perform some engine run up checks.

6.54am – Call Air Traffic Control on the radio ‘’5 Romeo Alpha Alpha Delta, 3 on board, fuel endurance 6 hours, request taxi for flight to Bemana’’. We are cleared to taxi to the holding point, where the final pre-take off checks are completed. I check the passengers still have their seat belts on, run through my head what to do if there is a problem during take-off, then call ATC again for departure.

7.05am – we are airborne from Ivato Aeroport (Antananarivo) and heading to Bemana, which is 219 nautical miles south west of Tana. Every 30 minutes during the flight I check the fuel levels, monitor the engine gauges and report my position to the MAF flight ops team. We will climb from 4200 feet (Antananarivo’s altitude) to 8500 feet and cruise at 110 knots. The passenger next to me is excitedly taking photos of his home city and the countryside as it passes us by, until we are above a cloud layer and the opportunity is lost.

Approaching Bemana

9.18am – we land at Bemana. There are some people waiting to help the team to the village. It is a 2 hour walk, and you need to cross the river. It’s not yet rainy season this far south so today it will be shallow. The local people also proudly show me the airstrip as they have been cutting the grass by hand and knocking down termite hills for the last 3 days in preparation for this trip. We walk along and I assure them that the grass is short enough and they did a good job with the termite hills.

Bemana Airstrip

The passengers will be visiting various smaller villages around Bemana during their stay, sharing the gospel and some provisions that are not available in the area, such as soap. There are 2 passengers waiting to come on the return flight, a mother and her young son. From what I understand, they have never been to Antananarivo before and have never travelled on a plane. They are looking very nervous! I load them and their luggage (which includes bedding and rice) into the aircraft. The boy, who must be around 5, looks terrified as I buckle him in. By the time we are ready to go, he is in tears.

0949am – We take off from Bemana, heading back to Antananarivo, climbing this time to 9,500 feet. The young boy in the back soon drifts off to sleep. The Cessna 182 tends to send most of my passengers to sleep with it’s vibrations and constant white noise! The mum is just staring out of the window at her country. When we are about 60 miles from Ivato she spots a larger village and excitedly asks if that is Antananarivo. "Tsy Tana, Tana tena lehibe" (that’s not Tana, Tana is much bigger) I reply!

Coming into Antananarivo

11.53am – we land at Tana and the passengers make their way into town. I then spend an hour in the office doing the final paperwork for the flight and talking to the engineers about the maintenance that was scheduled for the following 2 days.