Paul Calvert spoke with Mission Aviation Fellowship.

Bryan: Absolutely. In fact all of our work is to do with partnerships, be it a local church, mission, or an aid organisation. Partnership is the key and supporting local churches is very important.

All of us who are working overseas are professional pilots, engineers, IT experts, accountants, or managers, but we all have a heart to be involved in local church, or some area of ministry, just as you would in Britain.

Paul: Are some areas you go into very inaccessible?

Bryan: Yes. There are a number of reasons why we have aircraft. Sometimes there's just no infrastructure at all; there are no roads and when the rains come, even in desert areas, suddenly there are floods and you can't get from A to B. Quite often roads and bridges are wiped out. Sometimes the time involved is the issue. There was a really good MAF film I saw that was about a journey that took five days to arrive at the destination, but they jumped back on the plane and it took 12 minutes to get back. That shows that the distances by road, or water takes so long, so the aircraft really comes into its own.

Sometimes it's cheaper. An aircraft goes straight. I did a lot of float plane flying and if you travel on water, boats are very expensive.

Security is a real issue now in many of the places we operate. If you can hop over the security insecure area using an aircraft, then that really makes a difference.

It can just be purely time. If you're on a project and you're there for a week, if you're spending two days to get there it's not good. In places like Bangladesh, we have a float plane and quite often we have visiting medics and surgeons. If they can only give a week of their time and they have to then lose an extra day because of travel, then that's an awful lot of people they can't operate on. Also, if you've had a rough ride, you don't really want a surgeon with a slightly shaky hand carrying out eye surgery.

Paul: What sort of things do you carry on the planes?

Bryan: Everything from boots, to kitchen sinks, to vaccines, to goats. I've flown these really nice goats and we tie their legs together and put them in the pod underneath the aircraft, shut the door and we fly off. We get there and undo their legs and they're as happy as Larry.

We've taken children to school, if they're going to boarding school. We pick them up and deliver them at the end of term. One of the funny ones, we often pick up grandparents. They never visit their children, they only ever visit their grandchildren, it's quite interesting.

We take people doing meetings; doctors, dentists and medical teams. We quite often fly surgical teams and in the bigger planes, we'll be able to take two operating theatres and all the paraphernalia that goes with it. They'll stay there for a couple of weeks and then we'll pick them up.

It's very rewarding and a lot of fun. It's a great job, mainly because of the amazing people you meet.

Paul: You're going around in a big lorry at the moment in the UK, what are you doing in the UK?

Bryan: One of our roles is to raise awareness of MAF. I'm involved in looking for the next generation of staff. We have this 40 foot lorry with a cinema inside it. People can get a feel of the kind of work that we're involved in. They have the opportunity to talk to people like myself and other staff. If they want a visitor to come and speak at their W.I., the Rotary Club, or their church, then MAF can do it. We've also towed along this little two seater that we're sitting in.