Friday, July 24, 2015
THE OFFICIAL DAILY NEWSPAPER OF EAA AIRVENTURE OSHKOSH
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PHOTO BY PHIL WESTON
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Sponsor of the day
Mark Palm shows off the refurbished Cessna U206-GC that will become Samaritan Aviation’s second floatplane to provide emergency evacuation flights, medicine delivery, disaster relief, and community health programs in Papua New Guinea. The plane will be shipped to Papua New Guinea in October.
Samaritan Aviation provides only air ambulance service in Papua New Guinea By Barbara A. Schmitz
Learn more about Samaritan Aviation by visiting its booth at the EAA Seaplane Base. You can catch a bus ($3 round trip) from the main AirVenture grounds Bus Park or the bus stop at the south end of the flightline, past the Ultralight area.
M
ark Palm recalls flying into a village and landing his Cessna 206 floatplane on the Sepik River to pick up a woman with lifethreatening pregnancy complications.
“She was completely unconscious,” he recalls. “I didn’t have much hope.” They loaded the woman in the plane and flew her to the nearest hospital. But with no more room in the plane, her husband was forced to travel by canoe, arriving at the hospital three days later, unsure whether his wife was dead or alive. “He was told his wife would probably die, and that it would be too late for his twin babies, so he first went to
the morgue,” Palm says. “He had come to town to pick up their bodies and take them home to be buried.” But neither his wife nor children were in the morgue. “He discovered his wife and babies were alive,” Palm says. “His response was, ‘I don’t deserve this.’ But we talked about why we were here, to share God’s love, and for him it was an eyeopener that someone else would care…” Palm doesn’t just care. He makes a difference.
Samaritan Aviation operates the only floatplane in Papua New Guinea, serving those living in the East Sepik Province through emergency evacuation flights, medicine delivery, disaster relief, and community health programs. Palm visited the area at 19 and saw the medical and spiritual needs of the people. “It’s so remote,” he says. “Little things like a small cut can turn into tropical ulcers, and people can lose their legs.” While young, he realized a floatplane would provide access to those remote areas and allow them to help. A pastor’s son who had worked at his parents’ homeless mission in California, Palm went back to the United States and to school, eventually earning a commercial pilot certificate with an instrument and floatplane rating, as well as an FAA aircraft mechanic certificate. In 2000, Samaritan Aviation incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and started raising awareness of its mission. Palm wrote a fundraising letter and mailed it to 330 people, with the goal of starting the air ambulance service in five years. “But no one was lining up to give money to some 25-year-old with a dream,” he says. CONT. P19