I had an Angel Fight today for Addison Garner and her parents. She is a 17 month old girl that has Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Spinal muscular atrophy is a group of inherited diseases that cause progressive muscle degeneration and weakness, eventually leading to death. She needed to go to Madison Wisconsin to see the top specialist on this disease. Initially I was only supposed to do one leg of the flight, but no other pilots could carry the weight. She had travel with an extensive amount of medical equipment and she could not travel with it on the airlines, and she could not make the trip in a car for that long. So, I accepted the challenge of getting her there with all her equipment. Easy right? Not really! It all started out easy enough until I saw the amount of equipment and I was not sure how I would get it all in the plane, much less get off the ground. We finally got it all in the plane and I re-checked the weight and balance and we were right at max gross take off weight. Now I knew why no one else would take the flight. We took off out of Roanoke heading to our first stop in Anderson, Indiana. We were faced with strong head winds and our estimated time en route was going to be about 30 minutes longer than I planned for. About half way through the flight I was informed that she was using a lot more oxygen than normal and the tank was running low. She was also having difficulty breathing. I made the decision to find a closer airport that had the ability to fill her oxygen tank. I called ATC and told them my situation and they made some phone calls and found a location not far from us that we could get her oxygen tank filled. However as were on the approach I was informed that the airport manager did not want us to land there because of liability issues. He must have thought we had an emergency so I clarified our situation and then they told us they did not have the means to fill the tank. A corporate pilot overheard us on the radio and told ATC that there Jet Service facility in Springfield that could fill the tank so we worked it out with ATC and headed there. We landed and the people there were very nice but they did not have a fitting to fill the tank. They pondered what to do and finally contacted a rescue squad and they said they could fill it for them. The father soon returned with a full tank plus they were nice enough to give him another one just in case. We got fuel and off we went to Madison. As we were approaching Chicago we saw some pretty nasty thunderstorms on our radar that were just west of Madison moving east. I knew it would be tight beating them in and we just made it before the storms.
We were done for the day and would stay overnight because their appointments were the next morning.
The next afternoon when they arrived I soon learned they had acquired some additional equipment at the hospital. A rather large sealed car battery to run her breathing machine and another oxygen tank. I determined we now had about 60 to 75 pounds more payload than previously. I calculated and re-calculated and with the hot day (90 degrees) I just did not fill comfortable with this and decided to de-fuel some gas. We took out about 15 gallons of fuel (90 lbs) and off we went. It was not long after we were airborne I could see the storms building on the radar and once again was faced with the decision of where to divert to. It was too risky to continue to Fort Wayne Indiana. I decided on a more southerly course to Decatur, IL called ATC and got our new clearance programmed the GPS and headed that way. The winds were very strong on the ground at Decatur and it was a very turbulent ride. We had a little low level wind shear on final approach but I carried about 20 knots of extra airspeed just in case. The skies were dark and more storms were approaching I knew we needed to get fuel and head out quickly as the storms were building all around us.
After checking the computer and talking to Flight Service I decided to head to Lexington, KY. Flight Service did not recommend flight as there were moderate to sever thunderstorms forecasted for the entire route of flight. They told me that the winds associated with the storms were in excess of 60 knots; there was also heavy rain and 2” diameter hail possible. In other words enough to bring down an airplane. However I knew with on board radar that I could circum navigate the storms and make the trip safely. It might be bumpy but we would get there in one piece. Our other concern was Addison’s battery for her breathing equipment and her oxygen tank levels. They were right, the thunderstorm cells were everywhere but we were able to constantly deviate from our course and go around the worst of storms. We did go through one cell that was pretty rough that had heavy rain and turbulence. We were almost through it and it was like Mother Nature just spit us out of the clouds and pushed us through! We had to head more toward Indianapolis and then turn south to avoid the worst of it. All in all not too bad of a flight. We landed just before dark and I knew I had some tough decisions to make as I saw the storms ahead between Lexington and Roanoke on the radar as I was going into Lexington.
After much debating and analyzing whether we could make the last leg safely I made the decision to go on to Roanoke. We would take off about 10:15 pm and get to Roanoke about 1 ½ hours later. My eyes were tired and I we had only eaten breakfast so the snack machine was looking good. A little coffee and a bag of Sun chips and we were on our way. The ride was smooth and we were able to deviate from our course to avoid the storms, and they were dissipating with the evening cooling. We landed about 11:45 and I was very glad to be home. This was a very long and challenging mission and it reminded me to always nave a plan B and C! Little Addison was great the entire flight and her parents were troopers as well. It is a lot to trust your life with a total stranger and to rely on their decision making. Overall a successful mission!
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