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position report
by Dianne White
In the Aftermath of
a Hurricane, General
Aviation Delivers Hope
Operation Airdrop leverages its grass-roots network of GA pilots to solve “week one” problems after a natural disaster.
Ken Malvey’s TBM 850 arrives at Lumberton, NC with supplies.
Aplane, a pilot’s license, fuel and a willingness to drop everything to help people desperately in need. That was the genesis for one of the most effective and responsive relief efforts ever conceived in the face of a natural disaster.
Operation Airdrop is a grass-roots charity co-founded by Doug Jackson and John Clay Wolfe in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, the destructive 2017 storm that inundated Houston with 40 inches of rain over four days. They started a Facebook group as a way to organize volunteer owner-pilots to deliver essential supplies to disaster zones in hours, rather than days. As previous disasters have repeatedly demonstrated, government bureaucracy and large-charity machinery tend to react slowly. Operation Airdrop was set up to start delivering supplies within hours.
It didn’t take long for word to spread to pilots around the country, including Kansas City-based owner-pilot Ken Malvey, who owns a TBM 850 single-engine turboprop.
“I was impressed by the way a couple of guys in Texas saw a desperate need to get supplies into areas cut off by flooding and by sheer force of will, they pulled together the logistical and ground support necessary to allow GA pilots to safely and effectively fly supplies into airports in affected areas. I found out about Operation Airdrop too late to help in Houston, but when Hurricane Irma hit Florida not long after Harvey, I reached out to Operation Airdrop and signed up with them to volunteer my services and my plane.”
After flying missions in Florida in the aftermath of Irma, Malvey was impressed by the operation and touched by the very tangible impact that the GA community was able to make.
4 • TWIN & TURBINE
November 2018