AeroAngel, which provides free business jet flights for seriously ill people seeking medical care, recalls its ultimate Christmas gift. “Most requests for AeroAngel flights don’t come on Saturday evenings, let alone the week before Christmas. But the call from Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh was different,” explained AeroAngel executive director and founder Mark Pestal.
A few months earlier, a social worker contacted AeroAngel to see if it could provide a flight for a child in need of a kidney transplant when the time came. Previous attempts to get Jailyn, 9, from her home in Houston to Pittsburgh in time had failed.
“We accepted the request…even though it came with a very short fuse,” Pestal said. “Jailyn would need to arrive in Pittsburgh less than 12 hours after the call that a kidney was available.”
AeroAngel prepared a list of potential volunteers, and when the call came at 9 p.m. the Saturday before Christmas, “We scrambled…[and] had several viable options in two hours.”
The next morning, a corporate flight department flew Jailyn and her mother to Pittsburgh—doing so anonymously. She arrived at the hospital in time to receive a life-saving kidney transplant.
“AeroAngel has accepted several similar challenging requests in addition to the many requests it continues to receive for flights for children having surgery or needing specialized treatment at a children’s hospital a thousand miles away,” Pestal said.