Next time someone accuses business aviation of contributing little to society’s greater good, point them to Corporate Angel Network (CAN).
Since 1981, the charity has been providing cancer patients with free seats on business aircraft so they can travel to and from specialist treatment centres throughout the USA.
In August, CAN – whose work is supported by 500 corporations, including half of the Fortune 100 – completed its 70,000th flight.
“What we do is about saving lives, but we also provide cancer patients, children and adults – who might have to travel many hundreds of miles for appointments – with a degree of comfort and dignity,” says CAN chief executive Robert Stangarone, an industry communications veteran who took over the helm of the non-profit last year.
“Giving them access to private flights helps reduce their physical, emotional, and financial stress as they go through the most difficult of times.”
On Wednesday 15 October, CAN will hold its annual Fund an Angel reception at Las Vegas’s Fontainbleau hotel in partnership with NBAA-BACE.
The 2h event, which includes a live and silent auction, is incredibly important to the Connecticut-based organisation: the money generated supports around half its yearly operating costs.
“NBAA has been a great supporter of CAN since the beginning,” says Stangarone, whose long career in public relations included stints with Cessna, Embraer, Fairchild Dornier, and Rolls-Royce.
As well as fund-raising, Stangarone – who is supported by five full-time employees and four part-time volunteers as well as a board made up of industry leaders – has two objectives when it comes to publicity. One is to make as many cancer patients and their families as possible aware of the service CAN offers; the other is to recruit even more corporate partners.
There is twice as much demand for flights than the organisation can provide.Running complimentary advertisements in the web sites and publications of 36 media companies pledged to support CAN (including FlightGlobal) is one way of spreading the word. However, Stangarone has also used his connections to recruit 17 CAN “ambassadors”, well-connected, influential individuals in the sector.
One of the most recent is Stephanie Goetz, a corporate aviator, singer, and former news anchor who also pilots the air show-touring “Pink Jet” – an Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatros painted that colour to promote breast cancer awareness.
Another initiative aimed at increasing the pool of aircraft has been opening the CAN network to turboprops, such as the Pilatus PC-12, Beechcraft King Air, and Daher TBM series. Although the move, announced late last year, is taking some time to “gain traction”, Stangarone says it could substantially increase the fleet without compromising comfort or safety – aircraft flying CAN services must be pressurised and flown by two pilots.
How CAN works is simple. Patients or their representatives request a flight on a certain date and route via the organisation’s web site – applicants are later verified with a phone call. Stangarone’s team then try to match those details with available connections, which can be on donated flights, aircraft returning empty from a business trip, or flights where the patient and companion share the cabin with the company’s executives.
CAN restricts availability to journeys of over 300 miles (480km) that cannot easily be done by car (although it has started working with limousine providers who donate their services for shorter trips). However, because the USA’s top specialist cancer facilities tend to be in around half a dozen cities around the country, including New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, some patients might need to drive for days or spend hours on connecting commercial flights.
And that is before the cost of all those journeys are factored in – CAN never charges for its services. Additionally, those receiving chemotherapy and other cancer treatments are often also severely immunocompromised and using busy commercial airports and flights can up the infection risk.
CAN was founded by three people who shared the dream of using business aviation as a force for good. Priscilla (Pat) Blum, a licensed commercial pilot, and Jay Weinberg, the owner of a car rental franchise in New York state – both cancer survivors themselves – joined with Leonard Greene, founder of Safe Flight Instrument Corporation, who had lost his wife to the disease.
The three set about recruiting like-minded members of the business aviation community, including some of the country’s biggest corporations. Greene flew the first CAN flight in December 1981, bringing a young patient home to Detroit in time for Christmas after his treatment in New York City.
Before long, companies were offering support, and the service began to make a real difference to the lives of many cancer patients. Today CAN operates some 1,750 flights a year, which works out at almost five every day.
Stangarone does not rule out launching local versions of CAN beyond the USA, but the country-specific, taxpayer-funded healthcare systems in Europe, for instance, make it complicated. For now, the focus is on expanding domestically, as demand continues to increase along with incidence of cancer in an aging population (it is a diagnosis two in five Americans will receive in their lifetime).
Despite the challenges of matching supply with an ever-growing need, he and his colleagues enjoy making a difference. “We all love what we do,” he enthuses. “We work for an amazing organisation. And it’s a great way to show the best side of business aviation.”
