Update on Kodiak Meeting

The Rogers family are the missionaries that need the Kodiak for camp flying.  Pray that the plane will be available for them!

 
Hugo (national employee) and I (Chad) left for Quito at 4:00 am for our meeting this morning.  It's a four hour drive, so we arrived just in time to talk with the acting assistant director, who is normally the head of licensing. He had just sat down at his desk when we walked in.  Before we could even begin talking, he paraphrased exactly why were there and what we wanted.  At least he was up to date on the issue. 

The meeting went well, and the DAC official even apologized for the way some things were handled and the poor communication on the part of some of the lower officials.  We were able to communicate some of our frustrations, including my trip to the U.S. two weeks ago that totaled around $6,000 for tickets, hotel, car, and training.   The frustration came after he told us that the trip wasn't really necessary and that I still had to fly with the only Ecuadorian instructor qualified in the Kodiak.    ARGGHHHH!!!!

In the end we arranged for me to fly with the instructor this weekend and assuming all goes well, he will endorse my logbook to qualify me for a DAC check ride.  We are praying that we can arrange the check-ride for next week and start operating the Kodiak ASAP.  Eventually, I will be able to qualify as a Kodiak instructor as well and I will be able to endorse our other pilots for their check rides.

Please pray that the schedule I outlined above will work out.  Our largest mission user is preparing for High School camp and we would absolutely LOVE to have the Kodiak available to bring out all the jungle campers.   It would be especially satisfying for us to be able to use the Kodiak for these flights, as it not only fits perfectly with the design of the aircraft, but it also would be a very fitting beginning to our Kodiak operations.    Thanks so much for your prayers.  The comments we received on Facebook, email,  and here on the blog have been more of an encouragement to us that you probably could imagine!