forget most of what you've read here... utter BS. It doesn't compete with commercial concerns...
Au contraire. When I was working in the Northern Territory in Australia the buggers were everywhere. They flew the same routes as commercial operators but because they paid their pilots peanuts were able to undercut them.
They weren't above business dirty tricks either. One strip at an aboriginal community (Ramingining I think) was known to be prone to flooding during the wet season. For some reason MAF had been allowed to run it while supposedly keeping it available to everyone else. The trick was to get in there before their morning flight because once it had landed and departed they would declare the strip unusable thereby preventing the competition from delivering or collecting passengers and freight.
Like I said, very Christian.