If you live near the airport you may have see some large single engined aircraft landing or taking off, these are the Cessna Caravans of C.I. Traders, there is both a passenger one and a freighter bringing in goods for local stores. The Caravan is a real workhorse all over the world and is now increasingly used by Mission Aviation Fellowship in many places such as East Africa and Mongolia. The latest Caravan to join MAF, a floatplane version, is serving in Bangladesh. This has replaced the ageing De Havilland Canada Beaver that has served in that country for a number of years. Guernseyman, Brian Pill, used to fly it whilst he was based in Bangladesh. The Caravan can fly 50% more passengers, 163% extra payload, but using less fuel, it is also faster and has lower maintenance costs than the Beaver. During the monsoon season up to 70% of Bangladesh can be under water, this makes the floatplane vital for the work of MAF, who use over 200 water sites to land on in the country. Pastors, church groups, medical teams and patients and aid groups are all using the new MAF aircraft.
Caravan Tales (2)
Have you ever heard the story of the passenger who booked a flight on line to La Palma, but forgot to put the La in the request? They were quite shocked when they ended up in Majorca rather than the Canaries where they wanted to go! A similar thing happened to the medical team flying with MAF in Kenya. Derek Reeh was making his first flight with MAF in a Cessna Caravan, it was a far cry from his earlier years flying Jaguar ground attack aircraft in the RAF or his flight testing and developing Tornado and Typhoon combat aircraft. This was his first MAF trip and whilst flying past Mount Kenya his passengers suddenly shouted that they were in the wrong place! Derek had carefully plotted a course to take a team from World Vision to Samburu South as he had been instructed, but it turned out that the destination they should have told him was called Maralal Kisima, 60 miles to the North West, (at least Palma and La Palma sound similar, quite how the passengers got their names mixed up we do not know). Derek managed to work out a new course and get his passengers to the correct location in time for an important meeting.
Derek joined MAF after he and his wife wanted to give a gift to an aviation related Christian charity and searched the internet for details and found out about MAF. This was eventually to lead them to leave their life in England to serve with MAF in Africa.