General Aviation Relief Mission - Operation AirDrop Hurricane Florence KRDU Day 3

Another day, another 50,000 + pounds moved! That brings our total to somewhere in the neighborhood of 130,000 pounds... in three days. Alliance Air Charter, a cargo operator from back in our home town of Dallas, Texas, kindly donated the use of a Shorts 360, with donated cargo to pass out in North Carolina. The aircraft was flown in last night by Operation Airdrop board-member Alex Clark.

Tomorrow we will continue flights into MEB in Maxton, as well as some particular requests to ILM at Wilmington and hopefully SUT at Cape Fear.

We have sourced a water filtration system that can get the Cape Fear water system back online until road repairs are made and crews can come repair the city water infrastructure. We will be flying that system to the city of Cape Fear.

The controllers at Wilmington are operating in a flooded control tower. They can't leave, because someone has to direct the military traffic coming into the field which is also carrying disaster relief assets. If mold and mildew start to grow inside the tower they will have a serious problem on their hands, and unfortunately we have not been able to source any dehumidifiers in North Carolina. They are predictably sold out in most places. If anyone wishes to make a high-value donation to people who have no choice but to work in the conditions caused by this storm, that would be a good way to do so. We are seeking about 10 to 20 roughly 10-gallon-sized dehumidifiers to bring to ILM to dry out the control tower and other critical buildings in the area before mold and mildew set in. If anyone can source these near North Carolina please get in touch with us at contact@operation-airdrop.com or (940) 320-9407 by phone or text.

For those who have not flown with us during hurricanes before and plan to come in for the first time either tomorrow or over the weekend: the process as a pilot is quite simple:

You arrive at our supply location

There is an Operation Airdrop staff person there, who will tell you where we are going that day

You take a pre-sorted load of items that match the weight you want in your aircraft

You go to the designated airport and there will be ground staff on the receiving end to take the supplies from you

There is no point number five, that's it. Just that easy.

You can quit for the day whenever you like, stay nights wherever you like, quit and go home whenever you like. All of our logistics are arranged around making these tasks as easy as possible for the person flying the airplane. Since everyone is taking common items to common places, any one person can take a break or pack it up and leave whenever they want or need to, and the remaining pilots will automatically fill the void on the next run.

Due to the scale of air operations in North Carolina, it is advised to use the CMF (Compassion) callsign when flying as a volunteer for us. Firstly, it gets you a higher priority with ATC. Secondly, it allows us to better track everyone to make sure everyone gets home at the end of the day. Thanks to FlightAware for providing us with an Enterprise account at no cost through the storm seasons of both 2017 and 2018. Their flight tracking service is a critical part of our back end logistics. Instructions on the use of the CMF callsign for those who are unfamiliar with it are provided in a simple guide from AOPA here.

For those who are newly signed up: we require a liability waiver before flying supplies with us. It's a typical waiver that you are probably used to if you have done other charity flying. The form may be downloaded here, and returned to contact@operation-airdrop.com by scan + email, (940) 320-9407 by text message attachment, or a paper copy in person when you arrive at one of our supply airports.

We also have a passenger waiver which may be downloaded here. Note that Operation Airdrop missions do not involve passengers and we will not ask you to carry any. If you choose to do so by coordinating with someone outside of Operation Airdrop, that is up to you. We do have contact with organizations that specialize in flying passengers during disaster relief, so if anyone does ask you to fly a passenger feel free to refer them to any of us, and we will get them in touch with someone willing to do so.

-Robert Neal Clayton, Operation Airdrop

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