– Doug Wohl, Volunteer Pilot
“Over the years I started flying for public benefit organizations, and PALS [Patient AirLift Services] SkyHope is part of it. I’m up to about 200 missions. It was a lot of hard work to develop the skills to take my wife and kids, and finally strangers, up safely.”
“I fly a Cirrus SR22. It’s a reasonably new airplane with a lot of innovative safety features, like a full-plane safety parachute. When my wife heard about that, she said, ‘That’s the plane you’ve got to fly.’
“Most of us pilots love to fly, so we do this at our own expense and time because we’re wanting to pay it forward. When I started, my kids were young and I was partial to families with kids who needed help.”
“The folks at PALS know I’m partial to kids. So when they have a family starting out for treatment, they reach out to me. If I told you I’m going to fly you from White Plains to Boston, high through the clouds, you might be a little nervous. So I give a lot of safety instructions. And we do a little sightseeing. If we’re flying over Manhattan and our route takes us over Central Park, I point that out. Or you can look one way and see the George Washington Bridge and look the other way and see New York Harbor and Statue of Liberty.
“I flew a young girl years ago. She was maybe a year old or so, and it was the first time she and her family were going for a consultation in Boston. She had problems walking. I flew her and her family many times over the years, and eventually I got videos of her running around her backyard with her brother and her parents. I still get a picture or video once in a while.
“Doing this, you do make lasting relationships with people.”
Original article appeared on Faces of Long Island, courtesy of Newsday. Interviewed by Rosemary Olander-Beach.
PALS began its mission to provide free medical, compassion and veteran flights back in 2010. It was the dream of our founders, who as pilots felt their skills and resources could help people with free air transportation for medical treatments.
That initial inspiration and the first PALS flight has now grown to over 32,000 flights for over 3,200 families and an astounding 6.5 million miles flown. Quite an accomplishment for a free air travel organization a little over 10 years old.
Over the years and over many missions, we’re honored and humbled to hear how many lives we’ve been able to impact. Often times when a person is diagnosed with a life-changing illness, the care they need is inaccessible by car due to the repeat trips and length of each trip. When these families and individuals reach out to PALS, our team of volunteer pilots and mission coordinators go to work to make free travel to a medical facility or hospital possible. The stories we hear and those that our patients send us are all the reward we need.
