And, believe it or not, coordinating all that is the easy part. It turns out, it’s often more difficult to get the truck to the air- port to pick up the supplies on the other end than it is to get the aircraft to the airport with the supplies in the first place! So, we also use the airports and FBOs as the first place to find those ground contacts; the airport managers and FBO manag- ers become key players in helping us set up the relief effort.” Banyan Air Service doesn’t run a charter business, but it worked with the 10 different charter companies at Executive Airport to coordinate deliveries of supplies to destinations in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, Dominica and other areas affected by the hurricanes. “We also freed up a 10,000 square foot hangar to store water, non-perishable foods, medicines, baby supplies—dia- pers and formula, etcetera—and we had that going from around September 10th almost until the end of October,” Tonko said. “And then, Samaritan’s Purse brought in a DC3 so volunteers from the community, roughly 50 people a day, could hop on and fly down to Key West to help with the cleanup efforts.” Tonko believes NATA members are uniquely positioned to help with such efforts. “What it really comes down to is: we’re a service industry. We can be creative; and, we’re not bogged down by a lot of red tape. When what’s needed in an emergency response situation is moving and fueling a lot of planes and doing a lot of coordination, logistics and communication, this is the industry that has all of that covered and can be the first to respond,” Tonko said. “There’s also just an amazing amount of great people in business aviation at every level, so when it matters, you see all that competition go away and all kinds of collabo- ration come together. As soon as there’s a situation like a hurricane, everyone down here knows the importance of getting the airport and tower operating, maintaining the fuel supply chain and opening the lines of communication, because there’s obviously going to be a need somewhere. It sure would be nice if we didn’t have to do stories like this, because the devastation is real; but, when we do, it sure does feel great to be able to say we were able to do everything pos- sible to help out.” PALS, a network nonprofit organization, partners with NATA member FBOs and others to respond to emergencies. Aviation Business Journal | 3rd Quarter 2018 Continued on page 20 19 Aircraft owners graciously donated the use of their aircraft to provide relief supplies to people in need after Hurricane Irma. This is only one of the aircraft that Banyan teammates and volunteers loaded at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport.
