A few months ago it became apparent that we were going to have a serious barrage of work coming our way as we attempt to set up two new flight programs here in the Philippines. We finished language school early and packed up our apartment, moved to a temporary housing facility run by New Tribes and got organized for the coming months. Once some of our business was taken care of in Manila, we moved to Palawan and have been here for just over a month. Brian has been working everyday in the hangar on the airplanes, and Bailey has been taking care of Maycie and learning many of the administrative responsibilities she’ll be taking on. Among her new responsibilities will be flight following, bookkeeping and flight scheduling. It is a lot to deal with especially with Maycie at her side.
Right now we are trying to get things together at our only flight center on the island of Palawan and prepare the airplane and necessary parts and tools for transport to another island where we will set up the first of the two new flight programs. The airplane required and annual inspection along with many other maintenance projects and that has kept Brian and the other two pilots, Ben and Garry busy everyday. When that inspection was finished they dove into doing the annual inspection on the other airplane while all three of them were able to work together. It has been so nice for Brian to be back in the aviation world and to see first hand the training he has received begin to pay off. There is so much to learn and so many things to inspect especially since we are on an island operating in salty air and high humidity. It is a maintenance nightmare so the amount of work is significantly higher than it would be in a normal shop.
Once the second airplane is flying again, we will move back to Manila for two weeks so that Brian can start the process of getting his Philippine pilot and mechanic licenses. We will also ship our things to Mindanao where we will move in December. Before we can move, however, we will return again to Palawan for a few weeks to do some major preventive maintenance projects on the Palawan airplane. We will be living in temporary housing for almost three months so please pray for our sanity as it really takes its toll to be moving from island to island as often as we will have to.