As Georgia Airfield Welcomes Back ‘Ebola Gray,’ State Department Plans Expanded Program

By Cameron McWhirter and Betsy McKay
The Wall Street Journal

CARTERSVILLE, Ga.—In a nondescript hangar at a small airfield here, a shiny gray jet was serviced Friday after delivering an Ebola patient from West Africa to a hospital near Washington, D.C.

The modified Gulfstream G-III—dubbed by some “the Ebola Gray”—is one of three planes that aircraft-charter company Phoenix Air Group Inc. has used since August for about 35 Ebola-related flights from West Africa to the U.S., Germany and elsewhere.

The planes are almost the only lifeline from West Africa for foreign organizations trying to ensure their staffs receive Western-level medical care if they contract Ebola. “Right now, we continue to be the company that the world turns to,” said Dent Thompson, vice president and chief operations officer of Georgia-based Phoenix Air, who has been coordinating the Ebola flights.

But with a number of infectious-disease outbreaks in the world today, Phoenix Air is scarcely enough. Each plane carries only one passenger and has to undergo a 24-hour decontamination process before it can be used again.

“Phoenix can move one patient at a time, and it takes three days,” said William Walters, director of operational medicine at the State Department, which has brokered medical evacuations for Ebola patients to multiple countries.

The Ebola epidemic may have ebbed, with Liberia’s last patient discharged earlier this month. But it is far from over: Cases are still rising in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

On Friday, Phoenix Air delivered an American health-care worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., for treatment. The Phoenix Air plane landed in Washington around 4 a.m., and shortly thereafter the jet was in Cartersville, set to be decontaminated and readied for another flight, Mr. Thompson said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that other Americans who may have been recently exposed to Ebola but haven’t tested positive were going to be flown out of West Africa. One person was being flown to Atlanta, to be near Emory University Hospital, which has treated other Ebola patients, according to the CDC.

The Aeromedical Biological Containment System is a portable, tent-like device installed in a modified Gulfstream G-III aircraft, providing a means of emergency transport of exposed or contagious personnel from the field. PHOTO: REUTERS

The State Department is working on expanding medical-evacuation capabilities. With a $5 million grant from philanthropist and entrepreneur Paul Allen, it is overseeing the construction and testing of two biocontainment units that are large enough for four patients each, along with a medical crew, and can be loaded onto a 747-400 or similar jumbo jet and then unloaded with any patients, without requiring decontamination of the whole plane.

Dr. Walters said the new biocontainment units won’t be ready until May, assuming they prove worthy in testing. The new medevac units “will represent the next generation in biocontainment capability, for the current outbreak and those that may follow,” he said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force announced it had developed three “transport isolation systems” for its planes to handle patients with Ebola or other highly infectious diseases, but it hasn’t yet tried the systems with any patients, according to an Air Force spokeswoman.

Mr. Allen decided to fund the expansion of medical evacuation to help aid organizations attract foreign staff to West Africa, said Gabrielle Fitzgerald, director of the Ebola program. “This was seen as a way to incentivize people to know that if they got there and got sick, there would be a way to get home,” she said. Mr. Allen also set aside $2.5 million to help patients cover the cost of evacuations beyond what their insurance will cover. So far, $1.25 million of that money has been spent for nine patient evacuations, said Ms. Fitzgerald. Mr. Allen has also given money to the World Health Organization to help coordinate global coordination of medical evacuations.

For the time being, though, the responsibility of evacuating patients rests with closely held Phoenix Air, which has a contract for medical evacuations with the State Department. It also has contracts with the U.S. to haul explosives, play the enemy in military war-game exercises and transport criminals for various federal law-enforcement agencies. It shuttled the U.S. presidential delegation to and from Sochi during the 2014 Winter Olympics.

In 2008, Phoenix Air, the CDC and the Defense Department began developing an “Aeromedical Biological Containment System,” or ABCS, for airplanes to transport patients with highly infectious diseases.

The system—a self-contained, two-compartment tent of clear plastic, tubing, zippered doors and medical equipment—is placed in the back half of the modified Gulfstream. Funding for the project lapsed in 2010 due to federal budget cuts, according to Phoenix Air. “We just put everything on a shelf because we knew eventually there would be an epidemic,” Mr. Thompson said.

In late July, when two American missionaries in Liberia contracted Ebola, the State Department called Phoenix Air to pull the biocontainment system off the shelf. “It was scary to start with,” said Michael Flueckiger, medical director of Phoenix’s air ambulance division. “We didn’t know: Could we do this safely?”

Mr. Thompson said the cost per flight varies depending on fuel, distance, time and other factors. The airline was paid $200,000 apiece to fly missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol from Liberia to Atlanta in August.

Since then, Phoenix Air jets have been on call for Ebola flights any time of day or night. Emergency requests for flights have come in as late 2 a.m. “We sit here on what we call hot standby 24-7,” said Mr. Thompson.

Dr. Flueckiger said “anti-scientific hysteria” over Ebola has complicated the job. Many governments have refused to allow airplanes with Ebola patients to land and refuel. At one foreign airport, which Mr. Thompson wouldn’t name, armed police drew their weapons when they thought the pilots might try to leave the tarmac, he said.

The U.S. requires that Phoenix Air land at one of five airports designated for travelers from the three main Ebola-afflicted countries—a rule that has at times required an extra stop with critically ill patients.

Some Phoenix Air medical crew members with jobs at other medical facilities were advised not to go on trips to fetch Ebola patients, because they wouldn’t be able to return to their main jobs for 21 days after the flight, Dr. Flueckiger said.

In the early days of the outbreak, the company was “getting squeezed to death in terms of our staffing,” he said.

Since then, Phoenix Air has hired more medical staff fulltime to avoid conflict with hospitals and others worried about the disease, Mr. Thompson said.

“Ebola evokes an irrational fear in people, even medical people,” he said.

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By GQ Magazine

This summer, in Liberia, a 33-year-old medical missionary named Kent Brantly became the first-ever American to contract Ebola. And while he wouldn’t be the only one, this story of his survival-in the words of those responsible for the unprecedented rescue mission-is the rare cause for celebration as the epidemic rages on.

 See full article here

By Elena Scotti
The Daily Beast

SPECIAL MISSIONS
11.22.14

They’ve transported dolphins, satellite parts, even wolves. Then came a call to pick up two stricken American health workers. How Phoenix became the U.S. government’s go-to rescuer.

Phoenix Air Group, a U.S.-based air charter, can fly anything.

Designed for “special missions,” the privately owned company is capable of transporting precious cargo anywhere in the world. In the 30 years since the company’s inception, “cargo” has had many meanings. For air supplier Hughes Aircraft, it was crucial satellite pieces from Russia. For Australia, oil field explosives. For an American aquarium, penguins.

This July, Phoenix got a call from a new client, this one the most serious of all. It was the U.S. Department of State. The precious cargo: two American humanitarian workers with Ebola.

For the immediate future, the thousands of American troops, hundreds of nurses and doctors bravely fighting Ebola in West Africa, Phoenix is the only quick way home. Despite more than $175 million allotted to the relief effort, the U.S. government’s rescue plan hinges on one company. Meet the most important air courier you’ve never heard of.

Phoenix Air Group, Incorporated, was launched in the rolling hills of Georgia in the late 1970s by Mark Thompson, an Atlanta native and former U.S. Army pilot. After years of flying helicopter rescue missions during the Vietnam era, Thompson decided to create his own company—this one aimed at transporting anything to safety. With just two small, double engine Beech 18s and a handful of employees, Phoenix was born.

Named for the mythological bird on his home city’s seal, Thompson’s company started small, earning a reputation as one of the few willing to transport heavy machinery by air. When the rise of foreign automakers caused an upheaval in the auto industry in the early 1980s, relocating auto parts between factories became big business. By 1984, the company had outgrown its Atlanta home, forcing Thompson to relocate to an airfield in Cartersville, Georgia, where Phoenix is based today.

Over time, the clientele began to shift and their cargo needs evolved. Unusual requests were welcomed. “Phoenix Air is not just an air charter company,” reads a bio on the company’s website. “It’s a company with a long tradition of finding solutions to client needs.” The needs were beyond Thompson’s wildest imagination. From expensive art to rigs, exotic animals to royalty, the requests kept coming. Soon the U.S. Department of Defense wanted in, contracting Phoenix to provide electronic warfare training to three of its major armed forces.

Today, with fewer than 250 employees and an estimated 35 aircraft, the company’s laid-back Southern style persists. When a client needs to move something by air, Phoenix gets it done.

Each mission is different. Sometimes the client is an international zoo, arriving with a massive dolphin tank and multiple experts to keep the animal calm during the trip to its new home. Other times it’s a country such as Kazakhstan, in need of heavy machinery. Sometimes it’s a film crew, transporting wolves to Siberia for a movie.

In 2005, the company got a call from a new, unexpected client: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC, also an Atlanta-based institute, was looking for a way to ensure that employees working in dangerous regions where they were susceptible to lethal, contagious diseases could be rescued and flown safely home.

Together Phoenix and the CDC set out to solve the problem. With the help of engineers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the CDC created what is called an “aeromedical biocontainment system” (ABCS) made up of two large plastic tents, an interior and outer, with room for one patient. Using a HEPA-filtered ventilation system to maintain negative air pressure, the tent allows medics to employ heart and pulse monitors, as well as administer intravenous fluids. Medical professionals can enter the interior tent to check on the patient but must don personal protective equipment (PPE) to do so. Each time they exit the interior chamber, another medic must sanitize them, help them remove their PPE, and place it in a bag of materials to be burned.

Now that they had the isolation chamber, it was up to Phoenix to find a plane to carry it. The Danish Air Force, as luck would have it, had just the aircraft. Known as the Gulfstream G1159A (or Gulfstream III), the plane had an unusually massive cargo door that would allow the company to load the ABCS on and off a plane without putting the patient in danger. It was a perfect match.

With a rescue plan in place and a five-year, $4.9 million contract between Phoenix and the CDC, the planes went into storage.

In a 2007 article of Auto Pilot magazine, then-vice president and chief of operations Dent Thompson addressed apparent criticism of his company’s “on-call contract” with the CDC. “Think about a fire truck at the local fire station in your neighborhood,” Thompson told the magazine. “Fire trucks are there for emergencies, but 95% of the time they are waiting in the fire station for the emergency to occur. People might say money is being wasted to have that $150K fire truck sit idle in the station, but if it’s your house on fire, you’ll be glad that truck is here.”

This summer, the fire broke. The two American humanitarian workers infected with Ebola in Liberia were fighting for their lives. They needed to be brought home immediately.

Randall Davis, vice president, general counsel, and a pilot for Phoenix who bills himself as the “flying lawyer,” remembers the day well. “It was late July. We got a call from the State Department, someone who works on repatriation of Americans who are ill,” he says. “They said, ‘We’ve been talking to the CDC and we understand you’ve got these isolation chambers. Could you do it for Ebola?’”

In the months before the Ebola epidemic, Davis and his team were spending a great deal of time on a war readiness program with the DOD and NATO. For this “electronic warfare,” Phoenix was tasked with flying a sophisticated plane, hidden from radar, over something such as a Navy ship—to prepare for the real thing. “We get paid to be a state-of-the-art bad guy,” says Davis. “It’s like war games.”

This time, the battle was real.

While the Gulfstream III and ABCS, both specifically designated as an air ambulance, had yet to be used, the staff at Phoenix was experienced in transporting patients via air ambulance, both domestic and international. Davis and his team knew it wouldn’t be easy, but they were ready. After weeks of training, the first mission set out to retrieve Kent Brantly, an American doctor.

Two days after Brantly’s evacuation to Atlanta, another team set out to transport nurse Nancy Writebol. This time, Davis was in the cockpit. Just 30 feet from the chamber in which Writebol lay for the 16-hour flight, he could make out no more than a “form” through the plastic sheeting surrounding her tent. But the nurse, EMT, and doctor inside, he says, were heroic: “I can’t give them enough credit. They are wonderful human beings. If you were stuck in a foreign country, you would love to have this group come and get you.”

Writebol’s flight would turn out to be a success, as have nearly all of the 15 Ebola missions that Phoenix has performed thus far, with destinations ranging from Switzerland to France. Davis was also a part of the mission to transport the first person to be infected with Ebola in the United States, Nina Pham, from Dallas to a facility in Maryland. He was not with the Sierra Leonean doctor who was flown to Nebraska on Saturday—the first of the 15 not to survive.

Despite intimate, long flights with Ebola patients, many of whom are very sick, no one at Phoenix has contracted the disease. “It shows if you know what you’re doing, it can be done properly,” Davis says.

As of now, Phoenix hold the keys to the only aircraft on the planet capable of ensuring 100 percent safety for those wishing to transport an Ebola victim out of West Africa. “We are it,” Davis says when I ask if the military has a plan for how to get an infected American service member out of Liberia. While Davis and others at Phoenix weren’t expecting to get that first call for Brantly (“It came out of nowhere”), they were prepared for it. “We can do this efficiently and we can do a good job,” he says.

In Davis’s mind, it’s the medical workers, not Phoenix, who deserve attention. “It’s nice to be able to help out in such a direct manner, but all we have to do is fly the plane,” he says. The heroic individuals Phoenix carries home and the ones who sit at their bedside during the flight play the most important role of all. “These medical workers are amazing, such selfless people,” he says. “It’s about saving lives—and that’s what it should be about.”

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By Katheryn Hayes Tucker
The Daily Report

A Phoenix Air Gulfstream Jet at Monrovia Airport, Liberia.

(Seen above) A Phoenix Air Gulfstream Jet at Monrovia Airport, Liberia.

Here’s what wasn’t known as viewers watched news video of a private charter company’s airplane taking off from Cartersville to fly to Liberia, pick up an American physician/missionary stricken with Ebola and bring the patient back to Atlanta for treatment at Emory Hospital by doctors there and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and then doing it again for a second patient.

One of the pilots also was the company’s chief lawyer.

“I volunteered to fly,” said Randall Davis, vice president and general counsel of Phoenix Air Group Inc., after he was back at his desk, covered in contracts for future trips for the company.

Davis flew with a team of pilots on the second of the two missions to bring back a nurse who had worked with the doctor. The pair had worked in Africa as a team through a North Carolina-based mission group. “These are selfless people,” said Davis. “We’re just hoping for their recovery. We’re also hoping for Emory and the CDC that they’re able to research this disease so that it can be eradicated someday. That’s never going to happen unless you get them to a facility like they are now.”

Phoenix Air Group is a special missions company, said Davis. “Sometimes the missions are medical, sometimes exotic animals or artwork. Some are special people.”

As an experienced licensed pilot, he fills in when needed for the company’s trips all over the world taking passengers from one place to another for medical treatment or other purposes. He’s been flying since he was a teenager, fascinated by the planes he watched land and take off from an air strip on land rented from his father’s farm. He also flies his own personal plane and volunteers his services to fellow members of the State Bar of Georgia Board of Governors. Past president Ken Shigley gave him the honorary title of “air marshal” and named Davis’s Beechcraft Duke “Bar Force One.”

As the GC of Phoenix Air, he drafts the contracts and clears legal hurdles to allow the company’s planes to fly all over the world. The groundwork also includes securing clearances to fly over foreign air space and land for refueling stops and customs checks. Those matters are routine for the staff at Phoenix Air, he said. But in this case, the agreements that had to be executed before the first plane took off included the CDC and the U.S. Department of Defense. And it all had to be done quickly—in a couple of days.

But the preparations had begun five years earlier, when the CDC first asked Phoenix Air to begin work on a special isolation unit to fit into the back of one of the company’s medical transport planes. The idea at first was to create the capability in case one of the CDC’s doctors or medical staff were to become ill in a distant country and need to be transported home for treatment. After the incident a few years ago when an Atlanta lawyer diagnosed with tuberculosis flew home from Europe on a commercial airplane, the idea broadened to a more general purpose.

“This is the first time a patient like this has been moved,” said Davis. The isolation unit contained an inner and outer chamber. The three-member medical team used the outer chamber to put on their biohazard suits before going into the inner chamber to take care of the patient. “It’s the first time this type of isolation chamber has been used.”

He added, “Our aircraft are the only ones in the world that can use this at this time.”

The missions used a Gulfstream 3. On his trip, Davis said the crew took off from Cartersville and flew straight to the refueling stop at Lajes Air Base in Portugal’s Azores. They then flew to Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. The crew took the required rest stop for the pilots, staying on the ground about 16 hours before loading the passenger and taking off. After another stop at the refueling point, they returned to the U.S., where they stopped in Bangor, Maine for a customs check—and to pick up a fresh pilot.

They landed at Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, where the patient was moved into a Grady ambulance.

Then the pilots flew to their home base in Cartersville, “which doesn’t take long in a Gulfstream,” Davis said. “If it was eight minutes, I’d be surprised.”

Davis was a bit surprised when he arrived home to find an ABC news crew waiting for him. He gave a brief interview before getting some sleep. The news clip of him describing the plastic walls of the isolation unit never mentioned that he’s also the company’s GC.

Aside from the isolation unit in the back, the trip felt like a regular mission for the Phoenix Air crew. But because of public concerns about Ebola,there was a difference. At the refueling stop in the Azores, they were asked not to even open the door. The customs check on the return in Maine was “abbreviated,” Davis said.

He believes the event is an opportunity for education about the disease, which he described as “infectious but not contagious.” With the precautions taken, the crew was safe to fly the mission—and proud to do so, he said.

Plus, as Davis said, “They wouldn’t have gotten there any other way.”

By GA Bar Journal

Dubbed “Air Marshal and Commander of Bar Force One” by State Bar President Ken Shigley, Randall H. “Randy” Davis is a Cartersville attorney who volunteers his time, his Beechcraft Duke and his aviation acumen to save State Bar leaders hours of travel time. Taking the “Duke” from Atlanta to the Henry Tift Myers Airport 1 in Tifton takes about one halcyon hour above the fray rather than almost three hours of negotiating the endless work zones of 1-75.

Representing the Cherokee Judicial Circuit, Davis has served on the Board of Governors for five years. He took the seat formerly occupied by State Bar Past President Lester Tate, who is a valued colleague and frequent flyer of Davis’.

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By Matt Shinall
Daily Tribune
matt.shi11all@daily-tribune.com

Events of historical proportions such as Sept. 11 bring with them stories of llnprecedented action. In a time of fear and unknown, one Cartersville pilot too to the skies while all other civilian aviation was grounded.

General Counsel and Vice President of Phoenix Air Randy Davis may b«; the only civilian pilot to have flown on the evening of 9/.11.

Davis. sat among colleagues, in disbelief, at his Cartersville office watching coverage of the events that unfolded just hours before a call came in requesting the aid of Phoenix Air. When the notice was made, he was the first to step forward.

“As a citizen, it was an experience I’ve never had and one I’ll hopefully never have again in the after­math of that type of event,” Davis said. “I think every citizen that day, that night, that week and for weeks thereafter wanted to try to help in any way possible. It certainly was gratifying to be able to contribute so quickly and so directly that night.”

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By Flyer

In 1994 “The Flyer” profiled Phoenix Air Group, Inc., a Global insured for over ten years. The article concentrated on the spe-cialized, simulated electronic warfare training Phoenix Air pro-vides for the United States military and other militaries around the world.

However, this company is continually evolving. Since 1994, Phoenix Air’s fleet has responded to diverse markets; from cargo support for Federal Express to charter flights to Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean, a mecca for fishing in pristine water.

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