Career Pilot: On a Wing and a Prayer

A Mission Aviation Fellowship airplane in Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo in Indonesia.

Logbook

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What it takes

Training for remote flying

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Mission Aviation Fellowship Manager of Aviation Training Paul Bergen said missionary pilots will face challenges such as landing on uneven airstrips as short as 1,100 feet, in mountainous terrain. But he says MAF will train its new pilots to handle the conditions (see “Look Before You Land,” November 2017 Flight Training). He said the main requirements for new recruits are a minimum of 400 flight hours, with a commercial certificate and instrument rating. (Some high-performance experience is preferred.)

For more information, visit MAF.org. ­—TKK

“I just had this very specific call in my heart that this is what I was supposed to do,” Harder said. “I can’t really explain it, except for the fact that it has never left my entire life.”

Then, at age 16, a friend took her flying in a Cessna 172, and she caught the flying bug.

“We took off and he let me fly around a little bit, and helped me land,” Harder recalled. “I came back, and all I could say was, ‘Wow!’ I had never experienced that before, and I just absolutely loved it.”

Fast-forward seven years: Private pilot certificate? Check. Instrument rating? Check. Commercial certificate? Check. Flight instructor certificate? Check. AOPA Flight Training Excellence Award? Check. At roughly 1,400 flight hours, Harder could be well on her way to a promising career in the airlines.

Instead, the 24-year-old Fort Myers, Florida, native and graduate of San Diego Christian College is sticking with Plan A. She headed west to Nampa, Idaho, for several months’ worth of training at Mission Aviation Fellowship, before she hits the field as a missionary pilot. She expects to be serving on the island of Borneo in Indonesia—specifically, in Kalimantan—in January 2018.

Airplanes with purpose

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) was founded in 1945 by former World War II pilots who wanted to use small, general aviation aircraft to spread Christianity, and meet the physical and spiritual needs of isolated people in jungle regions.

The organization’s first pilot, Betty Greene, was recently inducted into the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame for her role in missionary aviation. Another early pilot, Nate Saint, garnered international notoriety in 1956 when he and four other missionaries were murdered in Ecuador by the Waodani natives they were trying to serve.

Today, MAF boasts a fleet of approximately 60 airplanes—mostly Cessna 206s and Caravans, as well as Quest Kodiaks—serving in locations such as Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and southern Europe.

John Hook, a pilot during the Vietnam War who joined MAF in 1976 and now works as a recruiter for the organization, says missionary pilots may be called upon to do anything from dropping off an evangelist to an isolated jungle tribe, to flying lifesaving medical missions, to delivering relief supplies after a natural disaster. He said missionary flying is a lot different than flying for the airlines, which he compares to “pushing a piece of metal around the sky.

“What keeps you coming back is seeing the change in the people’s lives because of having the airplane there—because of being able to bring missionaries and missionary doctors and communications,” said Hook, who is affectionately nicknamed “Captain Hook” by the MAF recruits. “You see the churches built, you see peoples’ lives changed for Christ. You see even their living conditions and everything improve.”

Paul Bergen, the manager of aviation training for MAF, said on some flights, missionary pilots may be called upon to pull off the bizarre—such as the time he was asked to deliver several gunnysacks of baby crocodiles to help a tribe’s growing business. He said the flight got a lot more interesting when one of the crocodiles got out of the bag.

“All of a sudden, I have this funny feeling of someone looking at me,” Bergen recalled. “So I turn around and there’s this crocodile that got loose.” He said a colleague was able to wrestle the crocodile back into the sack while he landed the airplane. It was an experience the villagers remembered, he said.

“Every time I go back there, they thank me for doing that, just because it helped them as a community in the middle of the jungle, and no one had ever done that before.”

Peace and the long road

For her part, Harder says she is ready to get out in the field and start saving lives. Despite her excitement, she says she has a realistic view of the challenges she’ll face in a foreign country.

“I have struggled sometimes with what God has called me to, in that I am leaving my family and friends and everything that I know,” Harder said. “But every time that God has said ‘Go’ and I have said ‘Yes,’ it has been so good.

“It’s a long road,” she added. “And sometimes there are obstacles, but when you have that knowledge that you’re surrendered to God in obedience to His will, you have this incredible peace—regardless of what the outward circumstances look like.”

Travis A. Kircher is a freelance journalist based in Louisville, Kentucky.