ASF France, ASF Spain, AWB UK and LOG Germany
ASF France, ASF Spain, AWB UK, and LOG Germany
Aviation Sans Frontières, Aviación Sin Fronteras, Aviation Without Borders, Luftfahrt Ohne Grenzen.
It all started over 25 years ago, when Aviation Sans Frontières was founded in France in 1980. Other ASF units - including ASF España in Spain, Aviation without Borders in UK, and Luftfahrt ohne Grenzen in Germany - have been created in Europe over the last 27 years with the same primary purpose as ASF France: to help with humanitarian projects by providing aircraft and aviation resources in general. The missions range from air relief operations through parcel delivery, child escort and medevac missions, up to wide-bodied humanitarian air freight. The ASF units provide essential support to the numerous national and international NGOs that regularly request help. The volunteers' generosity, skills and abilities in conjunction with their access to aeronautical logistics enable the ASF associations to be the link between the donors and the needy.
The work of the associations
Aircraft missions:
ASF provides NGOs with airborne transport to facilitate the dispatch of rescue and emergency aid in areas otherwise difficult to access.
For example, ASF France operates its own fleet of light aircraft to dispatch emergency supplies and help with remote or difficult to access areas and isolated populations. In 2006, 1735 flight hours were flown by about thirty pilots in countries like the Republic of Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo or Senegal.
Child escort:
Upon request from humanitarian organizations, ASF members volunteer to escort children requiring urgent medical care, thus allowing them to undergo state-of-the-art surgery in Europe that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to receive in their home country. Once recovered the children are again accompanied on their flight home.
In cooperation with the British NGO "Chain of Hope" and the German cardiac centre "Herzzentrum Leipzig", LOG is providing an "escort service" for children from Ethiopia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is planned to intensify the cooperation to allow even more children an essential operation.
How important these child escorts are, is proved by an impressive figure: ASF France performed its 10,000th child escort in 2006.
Medical supplies:
ASF flies humanitarian freight, medicine parcels, medical and surgical equipment to various places in the world. The goods are transported either on board scheduled flights, thanks to the cooperation of the airlines and air crew, or on board chartered large aircraft especially made available by airlines or aircraft manufacturers.
ASF Spain, for example, is running the programme "Puente a Bolivia" (Bridge to Bolivia). ASF volunteers not only act as couriers for medicine parcels from Spain to Bolivia, but ASF Spain also takes care of the distribution of the medicine to remote villages on the banks of Amazonas rivers by canoe.
A contract between ASF France and the aircraft manufacturer ATR - a 50 % subsidiary of EADS - allows ASF to offer shipments free of charge to the country of destination. The ASF freight is boarded on the ATR aircraft during the delivery flight to a customer.
Aviation discovery:
In cooperation with numerous European associations, organisations and air clubs, ASF offers young disabled or socially isolated people the possibility to discover the aviation world through special event days. From learning more about navigation and meteorology to actually flying, these days are bringing fun into the lifes of those who haven't much to laugh about in everyday life.
On the Weltkindertag 2006, LOG and ASF Spain organized flights for orphans to the EuropaPark Rust in Germany where the kids spend a day full of fun and action.
