Page 18 - Twin & Turbine May 2017

Once a pilot is signed up and placed in the database of quali ed volunteer pilots, it’s time to nd a mission to y. On any given day, the Angel Flight Central website has numerous missions available.
I’ll do my best to answer as many questions here, and I’ll start by addressing one of the more common concerns I’ve heard from the pilots I’ve recruited in the past:
“I’m too busy and it would be difficult to fit this into my schedule.”
The good news is, charitable missions can typically be fit around your schedule, and it doesn’t have to be the other way around! You can specify when you are available to fly missions, either in general or on a case-by-case basis. There are three primary ways that a pilot can look for charitable missions to fly.
First, you can scan the charitable organization’s website for passenger requested missions three to six weeks in the future. That’s right: these missions are often requested and scheduled many weeks, sometimes months down the road. As an executive, my schedule was usually very full two to three weeks out, but after that my time wasn’t always fully spoken for. This made it easy to look for available missions several weeks out that were interesting to me, and then book them on my calendar.
Second, whenever you have business or vacation travel planned, you can scan the same website for missions that happen to be going in the same general direction that you were already planning to go. If you could accommodate a charitable mission objective by combining with a work or vacation mission, it is a win-win.
And finally, most charitable flight organizations will send out email notifications with a list of near-term unfilled missions, and pilots can check those missions against their short-term calendar to see if they might be able to take one of those missions at the last minute.
How to Become a Volunteer Pilot
With that concern hopefully addressed, let’s turn to the nuts and bolts of becoming a volunteer pilot and flying charitable missions. The first step is to get signed up with an organization in your region. (Take a
Finding time to ying charitable missions is easier if a pilot puts it into his or her schedule well in advance. Oftentimes, a mission will align with a planned business trip, making the trip more rewarding.
Peter Schiff Aero Inc. Sixth Page
B/W Ad www.peterschiffaero.com
-
44
9
34
1
E
1
6
6•
M
•
7
T
T
W
W
I
I
N
N
&
&
T
T
U
UR
RB
B
I
IN
N
E
M
a
ay
y2
20
0
1
1
7