Local Heroes: Angel Flight West Soars To The Rescue In Southern Utah

There was a time that if you lived here in Cedar City, and for that matter, even in St. George, if you needed to get treatment for cancer, that meant a trip to either Las Vegas or Salt Lake City. Fortunately, for cancer patients in southern Utah, those treatments are available locally. But there are still diseases and illnesses that require patients to travel great distances to areas with larger medical facilities.  

That travel can be a burden and take its toll on those suffering and can be problematic when those who need the treatments have difficulty being in a vehicle for several hours, and whose support groups cannot be away for long periods.  

There is a group that has been working to make that travel be less burdensome by providing free air travel for people in need. Joanne Brattain is an Outreach Coordinator for Angel Flight West, and she was on the radio with us and explained her organization helps those in southern Utah.

“Angel Flight West arranges free flights for regularly scheduled medical treatment or for other compelling human needs, Brattain explained, continuing, “Using our volunteer pilots, we service 13 Western states. And within Utah, we have about 60 pilots who can help people reach treatment. For example, if someone here needs to go to Salt Lake City for treatment, what we often see is people whose children have to go to primary care or Primary Children's Hospital.” 

Brattain said that Angel Flight West can provide service between smaller rural communities if there is an airport with a regular runway in the community. There are 60 pilots just in Utah that volunteer to provide the flights. “Most of them (the pilots) are on the Wasatch Front. We have three or four active pilots down here, but most of them are on the Wasatch Front, but many of them will come down here to pick somebody up. Often, we are a waypoint, so somebody might be coming from Phoenix going to Salt Lake, and then they would stop here, fly to Cedar and another pilot would pick them up and take them up,” Brattain told us. 

In outlining what Angel Flight West provides, Brattain let us know it is not strictly the transportation of patients. “Most common is somebody who has chemo or maybe is in a clinical trial. Other services that we provide and have provided for people here locally are: There was a family where the father was in Salt Lake undergoing a liver transplant. So while he was up there, we flew his family up there to visit him. Before he had the transplant, we brought him home after the transplant, and then we took him back and forth for his check up visits. We also do domestic violence relocation. That's a little more interesting sometimes, because it's usually very last minute and obviously very confidential,” according to Joanne.

And Angel Flight West is expanding in to other services. “We've just started working with some service dog organizations. When people have identified dogs that could become service dogs that maybe are in a shelter, we’ll fly the dog to the organization that's going to train them to be service dogs,” Brattain said. 

Because most of the flights are in smaller aircraft, Angel Flight West has a limit of 900 miles per flight. They do cross state lines and can fly into surrounding states. They go as far east as the Colorado-Nebraska border. Anything east of that, the Mayo Clinic for example, would be coordinated with the Angel Flight group that flies in the eastern United States. 

And while Angel Flight West does cover Alaska and Hawaii, they do not fly the small aircraft from those states to the lower 48 or mainland. The flights Angel Flight West provides in those states are within the individual state. However, if there is a need to transport to the continental US, Alaska Airlines has donated a million miles in travel get patients in from Alaska and Hawaii.

Angel Flight West has been in operation since 1983, and in the 41 years they have been flying, they have served over 20,000 passengers and have provided over 100,000 flights. 

You can find out more about this organization and all the services they provide, and ways to help by visiting Angel Flight West.org. And you can listen to our entire segment with Joanne Brattain below.