“As any pilot may tell you, I think [the love of flying] is something that really never goes away,” says Dr. Epstein. “You’re kind of born with the desire to fly.”
Fate Steps In
While attending a flying seminar roughly six years ago, Dr. Epstein noticed a brochure sitting on a tabletop display that promoted Angel Flight. When he returned home, he logged onto its website and discovered that his lifelong passion could serve an even bigger purpose.
Just like physicians must be credentialed by hospitals, he had to be qualified by the organization to transport patients.
After he submitted the necessary documentation, Angel Flight qualified him in 2008, and he began transporting patients. He explains that the organization breaks up long-distance flights—usually those across several states—into legs. Pilots would then volunteer for whatever leg best suited their location. So a flight from Boston to Ann Arbor, Mich., for example, would be a three-legged trip, requiring three different pilots.
Likewise, Angel Flight staff evaluates all patients, he says, making sure they are stable, suitable for travel and have a valid, clinical need for the flight. Patients never require any type of medical attention while in the airplane. He says most of the organization’s pilots are nonphysicians.
Patients are transported to a variety of hospitals and healthcare facilities. Dr. Epstein sometimes provides door-to-door transportation. If patients are departing from the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Epstein says, “I chauffeur patients from the clinic to the small airport I fly my plane out of to save them the trouble of having to take and pay for ground transportation to get to my airplane.”
On average, he says round-trip flights last approximately four hours, covering just under 700 miles. “For a single pilot flying without a co-pilot, four hours is plenty of time in one day to be up in the air,” he says, adding that pilots are responsible for all flight expenses—nothing is reimbursed, not even the cost for fuel.
Not all flights go as planned. During one multileg flight last winter, Dr. Epstein says the weather wasn’t cooperating, but the patient was already in the air. Dr. Epstein was supposed to pick up the patient several hours later in Lewisburg, W.Va.
“Any pilot knows that … in the Appalachian Mountains, icing is a huge concern for a small plane,” he says. “When there are icing conditions, you don’t even attempt [flying].”
Dr. Epstein realized the bad weather would prevent him from flying to Lewisburg to safely transport the patient on the last leg of his trip.
