Less than 36 hours after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti on Saturday, a Samaritan’s Purse DC-8-72CF landed in Port au Prince carrying 31 tons of relief supplies and members of the $750 million private charity’s Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART). The cargo included emergency shelter material, medical supplies, and filtration units to provide clean water daily for thousands of people. On Sunday night, as the death toll from the earthquake approached 1,500, Samaritan’s Purse was preparing a second airlift to transport an emergency field hospital, surgical teams, and other doctors and nurses into Haiti.  

The 1968 DC-8, which Samaritan’s Purse acquired in 2015, makes this kind of rapid response possible. It is the largest of the organization’s 17 aircraft positioned around the globe. With two full-time, three-man crews, it flies 300 to 600 hours a year, transporting supplies and personnel to disasters worldwide, according to George Kalbfleisch, director of flight operations and a captain on the aircraft for the organization. “We can load and go within 24 hours after we get a call,” said Kalbfleisch.

The aircraft is based at Greensboro-Spartanburg International airport (KGSO) in South Carolina, a little more than an hour’s drive from the Samaritan’s Purse freight staging area in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. When major disaster strikes, “Wilkesboro immediately starts building freight and we immediately start doing flight planning. The freight comes palletized, ready to go on the airplane,” Kalbfleisch said. “You just pull out the Jepp manual and the long-range nav manual [and start flight planning]." Over the years, Kalbfleisch and his flight department colleagues have amassed a wealth of knowledge about “what works best for us” in terms of logistics and fuel, but he realizes that they still need help. 

So, part of that planning also includes a call to Colt International/World Fuel, the firm Samaritan’s uses for international handling and fuel services. “They figure out all the hard stuff for us—whether or not we need overfly clearances, landing permits, and so forth,” Kalbfleisch said. Samaritan’s also takes along private security, “depending on where we are flying.” The security ensures, among other things, that the aid that is on the airplane gets delivered to those who need it. “Having [security] people with us and on the ground helps us expedite delivery of that freight and prevents loss of materials and pilferage. The trucks and forklifts shows up right here,” he said, pointing to the DC-8’s massive port side cargo door. And virtually anything can come through that door. 

Samaritan’s Purse has 17 offices worldwide, employs 1,300 people full time, and supports 66 remote mission hospitals on an ongoing basis in addition to its mission of disaster relief. On any given day, it can be transporting x-ray or ultrasound machines, even full field hospitals. It transports not just doctors and nurses, but also biomedical technicians who service the medical equipment. Its DART teams not only include full-time employees but also scores of volunteers and contract employees. The pandemic made for an especially busy 2020 for Samaritan’s Purse, as it constructed field hospitals in diverse locations, including Alaska; New York’s Central Park; Lancaster, California; Nassau, Bahamas; and northern Italy. 

The DC-8 is equipped with a partially updated instrument panel that includes glass ADIs and HSIs and Universal Avionics UNS-1FWs for navigation, which includes controller-pilot datalink (CPDLC) and ACARS, said Kalbfleisch. He said CPDLC can be used over most of Africa on the routes that they fly. “ATC is a lot better in Africa than it was 20 years ago. Most of Africa has CPDLC for cockpit-to-controller communications these days, but there are special procedures, depending on the country.”

The aircraft is also equipped with dual satphones. It has an unrefueled range of 6,500 nm or a duration of 14 hours. Long legs Kalbfleisch has flown in it include Cairo to Greensboro, Saipan to Denver, and Honolulu to Greensboro. 

Samaritan’s does all of its own flight training, augmented by the world’s lone remaining DC-8-72 simulator based at the ASTG Group in Wilmington, Ohio. Kalbfleisch said ASTG intended to retire the simulator, but is maintaining it for the charity and NASA, which also flies a DC-8-72.

The DC-8 it had had a variety of owners prior to Samaritan's Purse, including Finn Air, the French Air Force, and an Australian cargo company. The French converted the aircraft to a Dash 72, refitting it with CFM56 turbofans. The aircraft originally rolled out of Douglas Aircraft’s Long Beach, California plant on Dec. 24, 1968. “It was born on Christmas Eve,” Kalbfleisch said.