Page 10 - Volume 10 Number 12

shelter where they are scheduled to be put down to a rescue group or home. He and his wife spend their winters in Florida and their summers in Pennsylvania, and most of his rescue missions are within 400 nautical miles from his location.
He most often transports dogs but has also helped kittens and even a 17-day-old female chimpanzee whose mother had rejected her. She needed to move from Maryland to Florida, where a surrogate mother was available. He once was able to fit 60 puppies on one flight.
“The King Air gives us a lot of capacity, and I’ve got an 1,100-pound gross weight increase that takes it up to 10,500 pounds,” Luizza said. “We can fill it with fuel, fill the cabin and still fly away.”
Other benefits of using a King Air for animal rescue, he said, include a cabin that makes the animals as comfortable as possible during a stressful move and its all-weather capability. “Many of the pilots who do this are very weather dependent,” Luizza said.
On the other side of the country, Chris and Jackie Gaertner are using their 2013 King Air C90GTx for regional animal rescue flights from their home in the San Francisco Bay area. King Air magazine featured their volunteer work for Pilots N Paws and Angel Flight West in a 2014 article. The couple has been flying together since Chris earned his pilot’s license in 1983. Now that her two sons are grown and inspired by the satisfaction of making a positive impact through volunteer missions, Jackie earned her pilot’s license in 2015.
Since 2013, the Gaertners have flown more than 250 multi-animal missions for Pilots N Paws. With the help of 5,000 volunteer pilots in all 50 states, the organization facilitates flights for more than 15,000 rescue animals each year through a web- based message board. Pilots N Paws sends pilots free equipment such as crates, harnesses, collars and leashes to use on the flights.
Disaster Relief
Alongside Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force that uses its fleet of aircraft to support search-and-rescue, disaster relief and to promote aviation to the next generation of pilots, are grassroots organizations looking for pilots to donate their aircraft and crew to disaster relief. The idea is to have available resources identified and processes in place before the next emergency.
AEROBridge is a National Business Aviation Association-endorsed organization that matches private aircraft with emergency response teams and critical supplies during catastrophic emergencies. The group first mobilized to respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 then activated again in 2010 when the earthquake hit Haiti. The most recent major operation
The shoreline along the Yucatan Peninsula is shown during a LightHawk flight to survey flamingo populations in the area. In addition to aerial surveys, LightHawk supports many aspects of species survival, including telemetry tracking and transport flights of endangered animals. (PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER BOYER/AERIAL SUPPORT BY LIGHTHAWK)
8 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2016