Queensland floods and recovery
I was at Cloncurry airport yesterday, and was stuck there for longer than planned due to the BP fuel bowser breaking down. Whilst waiting for someone to source some drum stock, I was talking to some of the local guys who were hanging around about the big topic of conversation, the recent flood. I don't normally name specific companies here, but I am going to make an exception, as I was talking to the guy running CMC helicopters. I noticed that he had pretty much every R22 and R44 running pretty much as daylight allowed, which is a lot of airframes doing a lot of hours. I made a remark to him that at least he might be alright out of this as his whole fleet seems to be working. Now, this guy is a small business operator, in a remote area in a tough part of the country at the best of times, and his reply to that remark was restored a bit of faith in the aviation industry. He said no, he won't be issuing invoices to anyone for any of his work that he is doing now.
This guy is not a charity organisation, he is not a government organisation, he is just a small country business, doing his part for the farms that have in lot of cases literally lost everything.
Country aviation at its very finest.