Stafford pilot’s Haiti flight brings hope to helpless victims

David Thompson recounts his flight into Haiti transporting members of Tigard-based Medical Teams International

By Nicole DeCosta

The Times, Feb 4, 2010

SUBMITTED PHOTO

On David Thompson’s trip back from Haiti, Medical Teams International asked Thompson if he could take back a family to the United States. After clearing it with the U.S. State Department, he agreed and dropped them off with relief specialists in Florida.

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When David Thompson sat in the crowd at the Portland Trail Blazers game on Monday, a woman turned to him and said, “I know you. You’re the airplane guy that went to Haiti.”

Thompson sounded bashful about the recognition, almost in shock that the 61-year-old president and CEO of Tec Equipment Inc., which manages Volvo and Mack truck dealerships from San Diego to Olympia, would stand out in the sea of people dressed in red, white and black and fixated on NBA players.

But the “airplane guy” title seems to fit.

Last week the Stafford-area resident flew three doctors, two nurses and two health specialists with Medical Teams International on his private Cessna 560 Citation V jet to Haiti so they could assist the thousands of people affected by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck earlier in the month.

The trip was quick — from the Aurora Airport on Jan. 20, with a quick overnight stop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and landing in Haiti at 9 a.m. local time on Jan. 21. He returned the next day.

“We had 17.4 hours of flight time,” Thompson said.

And the impetus behind the aid-flight is thanks to Thompson’s 500 or so employees at 12 West Coast dealerships who wanted to do something to help those in Haiti but didn’t feel satisfied just “donating money to an e-mail address somewhere,” Thompson said before the trip.

So they paid their boss — $18,000 as of press-time — for the $35,000 flight. Thompson made up the difference in cost and flew the jet with Tim Conroy, a retired American Airlines captain, “as his professionals,” as Thompson described the medical staff, they landed in “a whole other world.”

“We got our unloading done and the airport is very much like organized chaos,” Thompson said of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Haiti, manned by the U.S. Air Force.

“The noise level is unbelievable at the airport. They’re running so many of these C-17s — which are like 747s; there’s one every five minutes moving around,” Thompson said of the “Troutdale-sized airport with a landing ramp half the size.”

“There’s no taxi ways and one runway, so when your plane lands, it has to back taxi to the middle of the airport. You’ll land the plane and then make a U-turn and taxi back down the runway and then get off.”

Once unloaded, the medical team met with those from MTI already there and learned how they’d be assisting at the 350-bed Kings Hospital outside Port-au-Prince — shaken the hardest in the earthquake. Thompson then spent two hours wandering and taking pictures.

“But they’re going to be there for a month,” he said of the medical staff, “and sleeping on the ground.”

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