An increase in health workers, evangelists and essential supplies can be flown to isolated people in Tanzania now that a Cessna Caravan has joined MAF’s team.
The flow of help, hope and healing to remote communities is set to take off, thanks to the addition of a bigger, more versatile plane at MAF’s base in Tanzania.
Pilots are celebrating the arrival of the Cessna Caravan, fondly known as Bil after its registration 5X-BIL, because it will boost MAF’s ability to bring bigger teams and more cargo to a greater number of isolated airstrips.
Peter Griffin, who currently flies the smaller Cessna 206, shared his excitement at the opportunity to fly this larger Cessna 208 model.
“The Caravan will enable us to fly a lot further distances quicker, making it possible for us to reach places we haven’t been able to reach with the Cessna 206. Currently, especially the southern region of the country where we have partners waiting and hoping for partnerships to work together to serve isolated people in those regions,” he said.
“There is an eye doctor working in the region that has expressed a need and desire to work with us, but requires a larger aircraft to fit their equipment in. We have also discussed our possibilities to fly to the very west of the country, where there are some extremely isolated people groups.
“Due to the Caravan having more capacity also in terms of fuel, useful load and distance we can do more, and go further. Even with our current safari flying, with the Caravan we can fly out more than one team or fly teams to two different places to hold clinics during the same day, which would basically double our impact in the region.”
The Caravan will enable us to fly a lot further distances quicker
The aircraft has previously served with MAF in Uganda where it was farewelled by the team at Kajjansi airport in the capital Kampala before it was flown to Tanzania by Andrew Parker.
Andrew, who previously lived and worked in Tanzania, said: “It’s kind of a nice trip for me and exciting for MAF Tanzania to be getting a new aircraft for the new phase in their ministry.”
When the plane arrived in Tanzania, MAF Country Director Stewart Ayling was joined by pilots Peter Griffin and Roshan Stephen to welcome the 11-seater aircraft.
The team are looking forward to using that bigger capacity to serve projects such as an eye clinic bringing sight to people in hard-to-reach areas.
Roshan said: “I feel like the number of seats has always been a challenge since I arrived in the programme, we always take off with maximum load. So, I feel that with the Caravan we’ll be able to do that better, to fly more people and cargo. This will definitely be useful.
“We look for more opportunities to find more places to fly to – I know there are more places that need our help.”
We look for more opportunities to find more places to fly to
Experienced pilot Mark Liprini, who has more than 22 years of service with MAF, can see the huge impact the new plane will have because of its versatility and range compared to the current 206 model.
“We can’t operate to the south of the country unless we truck fuel down there, so that really cuts out a huge section of the country of ministry opportunities we know are waiting for us,” he said. “The Caravan turns that around; since commercial fuel is available for us, we can start reaching into other parts of the country. There is so much more ministry work demand in this country.”
The MAF Tanzania Program Manager, Stewart Ayling, summed up his excitement with these words: “This marks a significant milestone for our programme as we look forward to the new ministry opportunities this aircraft will bring.”
“For the last 10 years we have refocussed our flying to concentrate on supporting Tanzanian medical teams and evangelists in reaching isolated communities in the North Eastern part of the country. This has shown the value of this high-impact work but we have also seen big areas of the country particularly to the West and South, where the challenges of isolation are even greater. This aircraft will enable us to bring help, hope and healing to more communities in even more remote locations.” he continues to canvas out future regions of service.
The Caravan is being prepared for service in Tanzania by engineers at Dodoma whilst appropriate paperwork is being processed and the Caravan is expected to begin flying to isolated communities from January 2025.