Early Arrival
Story by Paul Beck
Sean Cannon is a pilot and base manager of MAF’s operations in Kalimantan, Indonesia. He recently flew one of his youngest ever passengers – a newborn baby in need of urgent medical attention
A late afternoon call to pick up a struggling newborn is always an easy decision if the weather is still good. Thankfully, a few weeks ago, the weather was still fine and I was able to be dispatched quickly to go pick a little baby up, 45 minutes’ flight away in an area called Kuala Kurun. This young life was literally just hours’ old and really struggling. So was the baby’s mother; she was still in the village recovering from a tough and premature labour. She would have loved to accompany her newborn, but she wasn’t ambulatory. When we all arrived at our floatplane base of PalangkaRaya, the baby was put into the awaiting car and taken to the hospital. With the help of Sugianto, our awesome flight scheduler, we carried the baby up to the awaiting car where they drove away straight to the hospital.