Matt and Becki Dillingham

Not Every Flight Goes As Planned!

It has been a busy week now that the aircraft is back up and running. Although if Rob, the engineer thought he was in for a quieter week, the aircraft had other ideas as, every time I landed something else had broken. After the first passenger flight since December, I returned with a broken avionics switch, which was promptly replaced, ready for a flight the next day. 

On Wednesday morning I arrived at the airport to fly a team of 3 from FJKM (Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar) to Mananara where they would be carrying out a survey in preparation for a trip later in the year with doctors and medicines. The day got off to a bad start as the team got stuck in traffic in Tana and arrived 45 minutes late. After climbing above the clouds for an uneventful 2 hour flight we reached Mananara, only to find the weather was terrible! Rain showers were passing through and it took a while to find a gap in the clouds to descend through. The rain held off just long enough for us to land and then it poured down as we got out of the plane.

Mananara was rather wet when we arrived!

The rain caused a further delay as I waited for it to clear enough for us to take off again. I flew to Mandritsara to get fuel before a return flight to Tana. What should have been a half hour flight took twice as long as I tried to find a way through the towering cumulus clouds. By the time I reached Mandritsara it was too late to make it back to Tana before it got dark so I had an unscheduled overnight stop in Mandritsara. Apparently Bethan was not too impressed that I didn't come home that night.

HVM (Good News Hospital) in Mandritsara

Mandritsara is the home of the Good News Hospital, one of our partner organisations, therefore I was guaranteed a bed for the night! The team is mostly made up of Brits so I was welcomed with a hot cup of tea. There was a 40th birthday party that evening so having had cake and a good time listening to British accents again, I returned to the guest house to watch a film with some of the nurses. It was rather nice to have a girly night in!

Gyro failure - zero suction

My eventful return to MAF flying wasn't over yet however. Climbing out on my return to Tana, I noticed a red flag appear on the artificial horizon. Glancing down at the suction gauge confirmed a loss of suction so yet again I would return with a broken aircraft! The rest of the flight went smoothly but it was a bit unnerving to see the instrument telling me I was in a climbing turn.

For more information about HVM, visit their website: http://mandritsara.org.uk/