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No Fuel, No Flights, No Money

I'm still here, and no, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Can't say I've been so busy that I haven't had time to let you know what's going on. In reality, I just haven't been motivated. Sorry 'bout that. Here's a quick update on what is going on here, and then I'm off to get fresh drinking water for the MAF staff.

You might remember a post from October 19 where I described our avgas situation. Well, it hasn't gotten any better since then. The second deliver of 4000 gallons never arrived. As of yesterday afternoon we were down to 600 gallons. It's so bad that no other operators are able to fly out of Shell either, as none of them have fuel. Actually, Friday we loaned twenty gallons to the military so they could fly their Cessna 206 up to Quito.

Apparently there is a tanker ship steaming towards Ecuador with aviation gas, and it will arrive this week. I've heard varying reports, from as soon as Tuesday, to as late as Wednesday. Once the tanker arrives in Guayaquil, we'll need to wait until a load can be trucked up to us. The bad news is that the price is going up twenty cents a gallon, so we'll be paying $3.15 a gallon, plus transportation costs. Meanwhile, we are only flying emergency flights. In fact, Steve and Darryl just left for Quito with a patient. And, while we don't fly, we don't bring in any revenue, which hurts our financial situation here. That's not good, as we are already flying less hours than we had projected.