Once you're (mostly) back on your feet after being near-death awaiting a liver transplant, what do you do? Something fun and just a bit mad, maybe? The obvious answer, of course, is to crank up your Cessna 172 and fly 23,000 miles from your Nantucket abode to Tierra del Fuego and back.
Obvious, anyway to Chris and Corrine McLaughlin.
Happy, healthy and on holiday in Hawaii in early 2010, Chris - at that time a senior British Airways 747 captain - suddenly fell ill and crashed into a coma with liver and kidney failure brought on by unknown childhood exposure to hepatitis.
Back in London with her husband in intensive care in King's College hospital, Corrine - a BA purser and private pilot - waited increasingly anxiously while one of the world's top transplant teams searched for a liver match.
As their appearance at the Flightglobal chalet here at Farnborough this week attests, the story had a happy ending - but she'd come within days of being widowed.
The flight to Cape Horn was, naturally, a great adventure (how many Cessna pilots get an RAF escort to cross to the Falklands?). But it was also a huge success in its principal mission, to urge people everywhere to opt in as organ donors, and to discuss the issue with their families before ill health or death.
Chris is back into King's for more surgery next week, but after he's up and at it again the McLaughlins will be looking at extra fuel tanks for the Cessna in a bid to cross the North Atlantic and attend the 2014 Farnborough air show to bring their flying message to Europe, and to keep the aircraft near their main home, just a few miles from the aerodrome here.
Chris hopes the flight, in an admittedly inappropriate aircraft, can raise some excitement for the cause. As he puts it, causes like breast cancer have coloured ribbons and fun runs, but "organ donation is gloomy".
Corrine's message is perhaps more urgent: "You'd recycle a water bottle, so why not recycle your life?"
For pictures, video and a log of their adventure, and lots of information about how you can add to the ranks of organ donors, see the couple's web site, Flight4Lives.
Source: Flight Daily News
