Kodiak deployed to Haiti to aid in relief work

A Kodiak airplane, manufactured in Sandpoint at Quest, has been deployed to Haiti as part of a relief effort from the Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship.

The airplane took off from Nampa on Wednesday, loaded with food and medical supplies along with blankets, solar-powered flashlights, tarps and ropes.

The flight is 3,000 miles and was scheduled to take 18 hours, according to MAF. Four crew members were onboard. It was scheduled to arrive sometime Thursday.

MAF already has four airplanes in Haiti, which was devastated in a massive earthquake on Jan. 12. The infrastructure in this poverty-stricken country has been decimated and an estimated 100,000 people have been killed.

“Our vision is to help the most impoverished people on earth,” said Quest CEO Paul Schaller. “This clearly fits our mission.”

The Kodiak was delivered to Nampa several months ago and the trip to Haiti is its first mission, Schaller said.

This is also the first time the Kodiak has been used to aid in a disaster.

There are 32 Kodiaks in use and deployed around the world. The company produces three a month and there is an 18-month backlog for orders, Schaller said.

The Kodiak is designed to carry more cargo and passengers than comparable Cessna planes. It can also land and take off in remote areas on small pieces of road or in fields, Schaller said.

Another advantage of the craft is that it runs on jet fuel, which is more readily available than aviation gas. Avgas is very expensive and is in short supply in Haiti and is what Cessnas and other small airplanes use.

The cargo onboard also included two boxes of aid collected by 9-year-old Moise Salois of Nampa. Salois was adopted from an orphanage in Haiti four years ago and still has two brothers and a grandmother living in Haiti.

Once the airplane arrives in Haiti, it will be unloaded and will be used to haul people or cargo throughout Haiti.

Passenger seats in the Kodiak are track mounted, so it is easy to remove them to make room for cargo.

“Our plane is very adaptable and can carry doctors or food,” Schaller said. “It’s like a Swiss Army knife, it is the right tool for the right application.”

The Kodiak was first manufactured in 2008 in Sandpoint.

MAF, which has been serving in Haiti for 23 years, has set up a Port-au-Prince communications center and is coordinating arrival and distribution of relief through its hangar at the airport.

Over the next few years, MAF will place 18 Kodiaks into service.

Quest employs 300 people at its facility located at the Sandpoint Airport.

n The Christian Newswire contributed to this story.