Looking back at the flights I did last year, in 2019, the hours and landings were close to double this years. Our reduction this year in flight hours has been mainly because of COVID and the changes that brought to our operations, but more importantly the way our main client, the Lesotho Flying Doctors (LFDS), operated in the pandemic.

Budget changes affected them, and reduced what they had available for flying. As such, you will see certain airstrips on the picture below that we frequented, while others we pretty much didn’t go to at all. This was due to LFDS focusing on the most remote areas, and arranging slower ground transport for some of the other areas.

Unfortunately, at this point we expect 2021 to be similar, unless they are able to organize their budget differently.

What is interesting, and makes sense as we prioritized high importance flights, is that last year I had fewer emergency medical flights than this year, even with double the hours.

Look at 2019's stats here