Cloud Nine Rescue Flights

First I need to apologize for being so far behind on blog entries. I try not to get this far backlogged. March has been a busy month for all of us, but it’s important to sit down and write about our transports. We’ve still been working hard!

After an extremely busy January with 5 transports in one month including our longest yet (out to Utah and California and back), February was slower with one transport. I’ll talk more about that later. February is also the time of the annual Cloud Nine Board of Directors meeting. So, we thought it only made sense to combine the board meeting with a transport, especially since two of Cloud Nine’s board members live in the Carolinas anyway.

On Friday I headed to Philadelphia to pick up Beth Miller, one of Cloud Nine’s board members, and she and I flew down to Rock Hill where we had dinner with Jackie Kyles, another Cloud Nine board member and several other friends of ours. We had a good pre-discussion about what we’d go over in the board meeting, as well as general catching up. Saturday we had a successful board meeting, in which we discussed where we want Cloud Nine to go, and plans for the upcoming year. I’ll go over those a bit more towards the end.

Sunday morning was the transport day. We got to the Rock Hill airport. Kylie Troy of Animal Adoption League had gotten 19 dogs together for this transport, heading off to their forever homes. Whenever I get to the airport to load up this many animals, the question is always “How are we going to make them fit?” Most of the time people who look don’t believe that it will happen, but are then shocked when we comfortably get all the animals in their cages for the flight up north. With the plane properly outfitted, we can very efficiently load the animals in!

The flight up north was a good one that went without issues. I dropped off Beth back in Philadelphia on my way up to New Hampshire where I dropped off most of the animals, and then off to East Smithfield, PA (just a bit north of where I live) for the rest. It was a beautiful flying day, not a cloud in the sky. These animals were very well behaved, and made for an easy transport. After getting them all offloaded, I headed home, pleased with the results of the weekend. 19 lives saved, and a great meeting with other Cloud Nine board members.

I want to talk a bit about how Cloud Nine is structured, as well as our board meeting outcome. Cloud Nine currently has 7 volunteers besides me, including a board of directors and other volunteers. Right now I am the only person flying, and the Aztec is the only plane we fly. As we showed in January, the sorts of transports we perform are growing in size in distance in some cases. In either case, February and March had fewer transports than we would have wanted to perform due to my personal and business schedules getting in the way from what is, and I want to remain, a completely volunteer operation. This is where we need to expand with the purchase of a second aircraft, so that we can get a second pilot up and flying, doubling our capacity for transports. As I said in my last blog entry, we are looking at a $100,000 purchase cost for an aircraft, and then need the donations to keep both aircraft flying. February and March have been very low on donations, which currently threatens our ability to continue performing transports at the level that we have been, much less expand.

Please consider making a donation to help us keep our missions going and saving more lives! As it stands, we are currently unable to fulfill the missions we get requests for, and are consistently scheduled at least a full month in advance, more frequently a month and a half in advance. We need to be able to fulfill more immedate need transports, and not just the scheduled transports that are reserved months in advance. Even if you can only donate $50, over 50% of the total money that Cloud Nine receives comes from donations in the range of $100 or less. On average, each animal costs $130 to transport. Your donation makes a real difference in the lives of the animals we transport!

Blue Skies,

-Ted