Category: LifeLine Blog

By Peyton Metzel, PhD – Safety Committee Chair About CMF Call Sign As you know, the CMF call sign is available to LifeLine Pilots as an alternative to your N-number when flying a mission carrying LifeLine Pilots passengers. Since CMF identifies you as flying a compassion mission, you may receive priority handling for routing or altitudes…. Read more »

Tyler Liston After weeks (months!?) of tests and scans and sleepless nights spent worrying, the doctor sits across the desk from you, looks up from the chart on her desk and says, “Unfortunately, it’s cancer.” Your care team recommends a new treatment protocol. You’ve heard horror stories of the side effects it brings. Your beloved… Read more »

Ann Rude Dr. W. Tad Foster has been flying with LifeLine Pilots since 2009. If the mission is going through Indiana, his name will usually be on it. As with most things aviation, his path to pilothood was not as the crow flies… Six weeks after high school graduation, Foster joined the Air Force with… Read more »

Tyler Liston After a decade of retail management, I made the decision to switch careers and start my journey into the nonprofit sector. Not that there’s anything wrong with retail, mind you. I loved the face-to-face customer interactions and the problem-solving aspects of the job, but there was just something missing. I wanted to do… Read more »

Everyone needs to eat!Dine at ANY Illinois, Indiana, or Michigan Logan’s Roadhouse location on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, from 5-9 pm, to help raise money for LifeLine Pilots. This fundraiser will provide the money to organize a flight to life-saving care! Dine-in or Carry-out!Present THIS flyer or order to-go using the code GIVEBACK and 15%… Read more »

Want an easy way to help LifeLine Pilots? Organize a restaurant fundraiser in YOUR community. Send us a message at missions@lifelinepilots.org and we’ll send you all the info you need! Why you should hold a LifeLine Pilots Restaurant Fundraiser… LifeLine Pilots is a non-profit, who relies on fundraising and donations to carry out our mission…. Read more »

Sometimes passengers make requests and the pilot is unsure how to respond. Here are a few we have come across and our recommended response:  Q: The passenger texts or calls a pilot directly a month after a previous flight. They tell the pilot they have another appointment scheduled and wondered if the pilot would fly them again…. Read more »

To make flights easy for all of our pilots, we have certain protocols that we ask all of our passengers to follow. This means the passenger experience remains the same, even with different pilots. We also have a few tips that will make the journey comfortable for everyone. Only 40lbs of personal soft-sided bags allowed. This is… Read more »

“Communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.” Once a flight has been set up, communication between the volunteer pilot and the passenger is extremely important to the mission.  Here are a few tips to keep everyone on the same page. Before making any changes on a flight, notify our office first.  This includes changing… Read more »

A lot goes into coordinating a LifeLine Pilots flight.  Our Mission Coordinators are working with the passengers, pilots, physicians, social workers, and sometimes other volunteer pilot organizations to make it all happen.   Here are a few tips to make the process as easy as possible for you and the passenger. Please do not allow… Read more »

Everything that we do as an organization goes through our database called VPOIDS.  This is how volunteer pilots sign up with LifeLine Pilots, how you as a pilot keep your information up-to-date, how the passenger applies for a flight, and how our Mission Coordinators schedule the flights.  Here are a few tips to make sure… Read more »