Runway: the Finnair blog

On Sunday morning, 17 January, the telephone rang and we learned that Finnish Red Cross (SPR) needed an aid flight to Haiti. The Flight Department immediately began preparations, and that same evening we already had a plan ready and were on stand-by to depart on an aid flight to Port-au-Prince. Early in the week Finnair’s SVP Cargo Services Antero Lahtinen, the company’s acting Emergency Preparedness Manager, led a number of preparatory emergency situation meetings, in which individuals in positions of responsibility from various Finnair support organisations gave the OK to the operation in their own areas of expertise.

Finnish Red Cross aid personnel, complete with hospital equipment, were also ready to depart, but it took us a few days to finally get under way, because a German group assembling in Berlin with its own supplies was not ready to depart until Thursday.

A flight to a crisis area is always slightly different from normal, and when planning aid operations many factors must be taken into consideration: for example the limited availability of fuel at a destination to which many other agencies are also bringing emergency aid by air, and delays on the ground due to makeshift loading equipment and cargo handling facilities. In addition, congested parking space does not permit long stopovers on the ground, let alone overnight stays by aircraft or crew. Because of this it was decided to transfer to Berlin on Wednesday the flight crew which would fly the second and third legs, to ensure that we would be able, within the maximum working time restrictions, to fly the aircraft and crew away from the crisis area.

Late on Thursday evening a Finnair MD-11 aircraft, with a flight crew reinforced by loading experts and mechanics, departed from Helsinki with its Finnish load towards the Berlin stopover, where the aircraft was refuelled with a greater than normal amount of fuel and the flight crew exchanged for a fresh one. The MD-11 is an excellent aircraft for such an operation: it can carry more than enough fuel and cargo, and the aircraft’s speed facilitates the performance of time-critical flying tasks.

Our original destination was Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, because the U.S. Airforce managing the crisis area’s airspace did not give us a slot directly into Port-au-Prince. The previous day only two larger civilian aircraft had managed to land there. It turned out, however, that despite our original plan, we were able to land directly at Port-au-Prince in Haiti. SPR Transport Supervisor Pauli Immonen’s indefatigable effort on the ground was decisively important in obtaining the last-minute change of destination, which allowed our supplies to reach Haiti a day or two earlier than would have been the case.

Landing on a restricted, narrow runway in a busy crisis environment and taxiing around a congested airport presented its own challenges, because the numbers of helicopters, aircraft, loading equipment and aid material far exceeded the normal handling capacity of the airport.

The exceptional one-hour ground time granted to us stretched into a more than three-hour stopover, which in itself was a supreme effort in the prevailing conditions for unloading the amount of cargo we had brought with us.

The Finnish Red Cross aid flight carried around 30,000 kilos, consisting of an emergency hospital operating theatre and wards plus related aid supplies. Also along on the flight were 56 Red Cross emergency personnel and media representatives, of whom half were from Finland and half from Germany.

The various building blocks in terms of preparation, flying and ground activities snapped into place and the operation succeeded as planned. We shared an wonderful sense of achievement on the ground in Haiti.

It was great to be involved in an aid operation as part of a dedicated team who represented only a fraction of the Red Cross aid effort in Haiti. Thanks to everyone who participated in the operation and to those who are working still in the crisis area!

Rabbe-Holger Wrede
Flight Captain