“Port Alberni traffic, this is Angel Flight, 2,500 feet over the bomber base at Sproat Lake. We’re inbound for landing.”
The pronouncement, heard over the radio frequency for the Alberni Valley Regional Airport, is one of more than 2,000 special flights that have taken place around Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland coast in the past 20 years.
The pilot landed in Port Alberni to pick up a patient needing non-emergent transportation to a larger community for medical treatment. The flight brought the patient quickly and in comfort to their destination.
And it was all done at no cost to the patient.
That’s the whole idea behind Angel Flight, says founder Jeff Morris.
A retired pilot and flight engineer, Morris was living in Sidney, B.C. in 2000 when he met a man trying to set up an Angel Flight, but he didn’t have a background in aviation. Morris agreed to help him and in April 2002 he launched what is essentially a volunteer airline that transports ambulatory adult cancer patients as well as children up to age 15 with other diseases living in remote areas to urban centres for medical treatment.
