Guest Post: Night Flight in Tanzania with Arusha Medivac

Guest Post: The Aero Experience thanks our friend, Jacek "Jack" Rejman, Founder of Arusha Medivac in Tanzania, for relating this story of a night flight with a patient in the Piper Navajo advanced life support aircraft.  Arusha Medivac provides essential air ambulance services in northern Tanzania and neighboring Kenya. Our Midwest Aviation connection goes back to 2016, when Rejman was in St. Louis to pick up the Piper Navajo after it was refurbished by Wings of Hope. He provided the narrative and accompanying photos for this riveting tale.

Night Story

I thought I would share a little note from my night flying...

Just a little while ago we got a medevac call around 5:15 P.M. One of park rangers from Serengeti National Park had a serious motorbike accident and needed urgent evacuation. Because of our location (3 degrees south of the Equator, in Tanzania, East Africa), it gets dark pretty quickly. Within 15 minutes after sunset, you can’t see a thing. This time of the year it happens around 6:30 P.M., so we have only one and a half hours of daylight left to go to the airport, prep the plane and fly 150 NM to get to Fort Ikoma bush airstrip that has no lights. Pretty tight, but someone needs us!

I drove to the airport like crazy (ironically, on my motorbike), did a quick preflight, and together with our flight medic Adam (from Australia) we took off at 5:42 P.M. for the flight to Serengeti. It is always so beautiful watching the sun go down while flying. I never get tired of it!

We got there after 55 minutes, and, as usual, I did a low pass to check the airstrip for any animals or holes in the runway and there are hundreds of wildebeests right there! Not one, but hundreds of them!

We had 5 minutes before total darkness, so not a lot of time to chase them. We did another low pass, but this time I saw several park ranger cars clearing the runway. In the next minute or so, we were safely on the ground. 

"Where is the patient?” I asked. “We need to depart right now! It is almost dark.”

"They are on the way," one of the rangers replied, "from Mugumu!” Mugumu is a small town about an hour drive away.

Well, there was no chance to depart before darkness, so we decided on a plan of action. How do we depart safely at night in the middle of migrating wildebeests? I was not concerned about the lights - our plane’s LEDs are so powerful that you can see with no problem. But the animals were a serious concern. 

The patient arrived within the next 40 minutes in critical condition, and while Adam was preparing the patient for the flight, I was working with the rangers to make sure that there were no animals on the runway. The park rangers managed to gather 8 cars for the job. They chased the wildebeests and parked the cars with lights facing down the runway. 

When the cars moved to take their position along the runway, it suddenly became very dark near our Zoggy plane (5H-ZOG). It was such a weird feeling to be climbing into the plane’s cockpit in the dark, clearly hearing wildebeests around! (You should try that!)

We fired the engines and taxied to the beginning of Runway 09. I turned around and stopped to have a good idea where to aim. Looking at the red taillights of the rangers’ cars (8 cars, so 16 lights which are not aligned), might get confusing! 

Once I had a good idea where to go, I turned on all the lights in our plane, pushed the power and…Totally no problem! I could see far enough and wide enough to feel safe. Zoggy got airborne in no time (310 HP with turbo each side)!

The only thing with taking off at night from the bush airstrip is that once you lift the nose wheel from the ground, it becomes very dark - IFR flying 5 ft from the ground - but it lasts only a few seconds!

After climbing to FL 100, we arrived safely to Mwanza Airport that has 4 km of runway and a VOR approach to Runway 30. An ambulance was waiting for us already, and our patient was transported to Bugando Hospital.

Well...Another day! 

I have flown in Tanzania for more than 20 years, and I still get a thrill while doing that!

All the best!

Jack