As originally published on Wednesday, October 11, 2006

By Katie E. Leslie
News-Post Staff

	Staff photo by Bill Green Jill Weber and Dean Durbin, both pilots, are the founders of Flights for You, a nonprofit organization that provides free air transportation to people in need of medical treatment from long-distance locations.

MOUNT AIRY -- Providing access to medical care is a mission for Jill Weber and Dean Durbin. The two Frederick County pilots fly people in need to faraway locations for specialized treatment.

As founders of the nonprofit organization Flights for You, they hope to make their volunteer hobby a fulltime career.

Ms. Weber and Mr. Durbin have flown cancer patients from Tangier Island, Va., to the mainland for treatment, and taken a child with a physical deformity from a New York hospital on part of his journey home.

For Mario Castillo, their work could help lead to a cure for the eye disease afflicting much of his family.

Ms. Weber and Mr. Durbin picked up the Florida man in January on the third leg of his trip to the National Institutes of Health. Mr. Castillo suffers from a retinal disease that causes his sight to deteriorate, and he was heading to NIH for a study that might lead to a cure.

Mr. Castillo, 43, said he loved flying in Ms. Weber's four-seat Cessna 182.

"They make you feel like you own a private jet," he said.

Ms. Weber planned to fly such missions when she started training to be a pilot, she said. During instrument rating flight lessons in 2002, she told Mr. Durbin, her flight instructor, about Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic, a nonprofit air transportation organization.

"I have an airplane at my disposal. I have a skill others don't, and I can do this," said Ms. Weber, a Mount Airy resident for 25 years. "What better way to give back?"

Hobby to career

Private donors fund Ms. Weber and Mr. Durbin's flights, which are coordinated by Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic.

The pair set out on their first mission in October 2004, flying a woman with advanced melanoma to NIH for treatment.

At the time, they had no plans of turning their volunteerism into a full-time career, but the feeling that followed the flight was overwhelming, said Mr. Durbin, who lives in New Windsor.

"It kind of puts you up on 'Cloud 9,'" he said.

They quickly realized they wanted to find a way to perform Angel Flight missions regularly. By September 2005, they had created their own nonprofit, with the ultimate goal of being able to fly five days a week when funds allow.

While they are not the only pilots in the area to volunteer time flying people in need, they may be the first to create an organization solely to support Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic.

Suzanne Rhodes, spokeswoman for Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic, said most of the pilots are retired or businesspeople with a hobby who cover missions when time and finances allow.

Steve Patterson, executive director of Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic, said four pilots in his organization have created nonprofits.

"The one in Frederick is the first I'm aware of whose ultimate goal is to just fly full-time," he said.

Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic pilots are notified by e-mail of available missions; these include entire trips or segments of multileg trips, according to Mr. Durbin, a plane mechanic for DynCorp and Andrews Air Force Base. If one segment goes unfilled, the entire trip must be canceled.

"We saw there's such a need for pilots out there," he said. "All we want to do is fulfill more missions so none of their missions are canceled."

With associate Flights for You member Tim Brennan of Damascus, they have flown roughly 15 missions since beginning in 2004, transporting adults and children. They travel within 500 nautical miles, Ms. Weber said ----as far north as Massachusetts or as far south as North Carolina.

Though Ms. Weber calls the patients twice before the trip, they first meet at the airport the day of the flight. Though she and Mr. Durbin usually are not able to keep in contact with the people they help, they don't forget the struggles the patients face.

Ms. Weber, a breast cancer survivor, said she feels a special kinship with those who have cancer.

Diagnosed in 2001, she did not need radiation therapy, she said, nor did she need to travel far for treatment.

"I had it easy compared to the cancer patients we transport," she said.

Their work is a reminder of how fortunate Marylanders are in having several magnet hospitals and treatment centers, she said.

"For us around here, we don't think twice É--it's all right here," she said. "But if you live on a farm in Indiana? These people just don't have the money to drop $500 to $700 on a plane ticket. If (organizations) like Angel Flight aren't there, they don't get there."