03 Mar Air Serv sends aircraft to Haiti to assist humanitarian response to crisis

Warrenton, Virginia, March 3, 2004 — Air Serv International sent two planes to Haiti today to assist the international humanitarian community in its response to the crisis there. Air Serv is providing two King Air A-90’s to transport personnel and medical supplies within Haiti.

The estimated month-long project is made possible by a grant from the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). The Air Serv planes will fly initially from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Port-au-Prince, and then shuttle aid workers and material within Haiti.

“Our mission is to support the humanitarian community and the OFDA in meeting the emergency needs of the Haitian people during and after the current crisis,” said Stu Willcuts, president of Air Serv International.

In 19 years, with over 150,000 flights and 16 million miles, AirServ has never had a flight-related injury or fatality, although it flies most of its flights in the rough conditions of the developing world, primarily in emergency humanitarian response actions. AirServ pilots average more than 6,000 hours of experience each. The current fleet of 19 turbine and two piston fixed-wing aircraft, plus 2 turbine helicopters, has maintained a reliability schedule of over 98 percent, in part because it prepositions spare parts, provides a permanent maintenance engineer with each program, and conducts an aggressive maintenance program.