As you can imagine, every day is an adventure for MAF pilots. Straight from their logs, here's a look at some of the passengers and cargo they've carried.
Typical Passengers
- Missionaries
- Christian workers and their children
- Doctors and other medical personnel
- Patients on stretchers
- Indigenous evangelists and pastors
- Local villagers
Typical Cargo
- Bibles and books
- Medicines
- Passenger luggage
- Sacks of cement, nails, pipes and other building supplies
- Food commodities such as flour, rice, corn, etc.
- Household goods
- Propane and butane gas cylinders
- Fuel in 55-gallon drums: aviation fuel, oil, kerosene, gasoline
- Small livestock such as chickens, turkeys, pigs, ducks, cats and dogs
Unusual Passengers
- Political refugee escaping to freedom
- Babies born in flight . . . not too unusual
- Patient with a dagger protruding from his head. The dagger couldn't be removed locally, and the patient was conscious and alert during the flight to the hospital
- Ten Pygmies: five adults and five babies -- their combined weight well below the maximum for a Cessna 206 aircraft
- A Pygmy baby with dysentery carried in an air sickness bag: the mother had died in childbirth at a clinic and the baby was returning to its home village. As a precautionary measure, the nurse had tucked the baby into the air sickness bag with its tiny head sticking over the top. That baby was the smallest human to travel on an MAF plane
Vehicles
- A complete tractor: a Cub Cadet model 185 was rolled into the plane with its back wheels removed so the plane door could be closed shut. The wheels were reattached after the flight
- World War II Jeep
Animals
- Live crocodiles, alligators and snakes for scientific research
- "Diapered" chickens, turkeys and other fowl: diapers prevent a mess in the cargo pod
- Heifers and cows: occasionally needing to be drugged for the flight
- Bee hives and honey bees: as many as 10,000 bees...and only one escapee
- Live fish: 500 tilapias to stock a pond in Congo. The MAF pilot's name? Bob Fish! A Peace Corps volunteer accompanied the fish to force oxygen into the containers from an air tube the pilot had taped to the window vent. The plane made a stop halfway to its destination so the water could be changed. Most of the fish survived the flight
- A chimpanzee going for evaluation after having bitten some children
- Live sheep, full grown -- up to 25 per trip
- Parrots and macaws
- Iguanas
- Pigs to market
- Milk goats to provide a source of fresh milk to Yanomami children in the Amazonian jungle -- it was a noisy 1.5-hour flight!
Household Goods
- Kerosene refrigerators and gas freezers: completely disassembled, sometimes even cut, then reassembled upon arrival
- Mattresses
- Woven baskets on their way to a local market, filling the plane from floor to ceiling
Scientific Specimens
- Ebola virus: the first animal biopsies of the Ebola virus were flown out of Congo by MAF. Frozen in milk containers filled with nitrogen, the samples were en route to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and other European countries
- Time-sensitive blood and other samples destined for laboratory testing
- Human eyes to be delivered to eye clinics
- Orange tree seedlings: enough to plant an entire orchard
Equipment
- Prostheses for amputees
- Blow guns used in hunting by tribal people
- National elections ballot boxes
- Disassembled saw mill
- Disassembled bulldozer
- Dryers for cardamom seeds.
Valuables
- Copper crosses used as "bride price" in central and southern Congo
- Thousands of rare coins: on two occasions when Congo changed its currency, villagers in the interior needed to exchange old coins for new currency. The only way to the bank was via MAF
- Cargo that didn't make it: million-dollar contraband. An MAF pilot-turned-detective spotted the suspicious-looking bag of beans a local official wanted to smuggle out of the country. It contained a fortune in diamonds