Business aviation has been at the vanguard of the humanitarian response to the 7.0 earthquake that reduced Haitian capital Port-au-Prince to a shambles, killing or injuring hundreds of thousands of people and displacing more than a million others.
With scheduled airline service to the city’s damaged Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport cut, its harbor clogged with debris and the military relief effort spooling up slowly, business aviation was the answer for charity organizations looking for transportation into the ravaged country. “The earthquake hit on January 12 and NBAA almost immediately got
lots of calls from people in all corners of the industry who wanted to help,” said Dan Hubbard, NBAA’s senior vice president of communications. The association’s Airmail Web forum soon lit up with offers of assistance from people in the industry. Flight planning companies such as Jeppesen provided free trip routing for flights heading to Haiti, while some FBOs offered fuel discounts for relief missions. While other companies chose to make financial contributions to the effort, Jet Support Services donated 20,000 pounds of supplies and assigned staff to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to assist with aircraft loading and other tasks. As an incentive to their clients, the company also waived the payment for flight hours of aircraft enrolled in their engine or airframe maintenance plans that were used in the relief effort.
