Standard Operating Procedure for Communication on Relay Missions

If you are participating in a relay mission or on a mission that has multiple legs, please follow these suggested procedures to best prepare for the upcoming mission as well as day-of mission communication.

Relay Mission: Two-leg or Three-leg mission

The standard operating procedure is to designate one volunteer pilot to communicate with the passenger. This pilot is generally the first pilot to fly the passenger in the relay. As the designated spokesperson, you will want to confirm details about the baggage and communicate hand-off details. Please remember that passenger luggage must fit in all the planes in the roundtrip relay, and any changes must be agreed upon by the passengers and volunteers.

We strongly encourage all volunteer pilots on a relay mission to reach out to their passengers to introduce themselves and share information on what to expect when flying in their aircraft. If the passengers have questions about timing details for the trip, you can let them know to wait for information from the first pilot in the relay.

This is an example of a relay mission. In this scenario, the Leg 1 pilot (Denver to Hugoton) would be responsible for communicating with the passenger. However, the Leg 2 pilot (Hugoton to Oklahoma City) should still reach out to the passenger and introduce themselves.

Helpful suggestions:

• We encourage volunteers to share the tail number and color of their aircraft to make it easier to identify each other on the field or at the FBO.
  • If you have your AFW badge and any other gear, we encourage you to wear that.
• Relay airports can be changed per the discretion of the volunteer pilots. The relay airports in the itinerary are suggested based off of the total distance of the flight and/or the number of volunteer pilots based at that airport. If you would like to request a change to the relay airport, please confirm that change with the hand-off volunteer pilot that you're meeting for the mission. You can email the Mission Ops team at missionsteam@angelflightwest.org of the airport change so that we have the updated routing on our calendar.