MFI Moving

Get set for yet another address change for me! The MFI agents in Cap Haitien e-mailed me the following article. MFI is the airline I use to fly back and forth to Haiti. They also carry HAFF's mail and cargo. Please keep them in your prayers as they prepare for this move. They will be starting all over having to find volunteers and businesses and having to move their families.

Missionary airline flies away to new base

Group called PBIA home for 40 years

By Erika Slife
Staff writerDecember 24, 2005

An operator of charitable flights that delivers "Christmas almost every flight" will be relocating its headquarters after negotiations to stay at Palm Beach International Airport fell through.

Missionary Flights International, which transports missionaries and supplies to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, will be moving its operation to St. Lucie County International Airport in Fort Pierce next year, after approximately 40 years of flying out of PBIA.

The four-plane, 16-employee operation will relocate to a three-acre land base, where it will operate out of its own $1.3 million, 15,000-square-foot hangar, warehouse and office space, said Dick Snook, president of Missionary Flights.

The organization will lease the land for 35 years, with the option to extend another 35.

The agreement relieves workers who have been in limbo for more than 4 1/2 years since the organization lost its space when the airport decided to rebuild, Snook said. It moved its office to Lake Worth, but continued to fly planes out of the airport.

"We just decided that there wasn't room for us," Snook said.

Airport officials said they tried working with the organization and that they offered it a lease option. But in the end, negotiations broke down.

"We worked really hard. We showed them the available lease areas, the ramping areas available for parking. I don't really know what they wanted vs. what we were able to offer," said Lisa De La Rionda, PBIA spokeswoman.

Snook said that the spaces offered at Palm Beach International did not meet all of their needs, such as enough space for an office, hangar and warehouse.

Missionary Flights has an operating budget of about $3 million a year, Snook said. The group flies mail, supplies and gifts to approximately 700 missionaries working in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The organization owns three DC-3 airplanes -- which can carry close to 7,000 pounds of goods or 20 people -- and a Cessna 310, used mostly for passengers and emergencies. Workers make about two flights a day, twice a week to the Caribbean, Snook said.

"It's like Christmas almost every flight," Snook said. "[The missionaries] tell us that the morning the airplanes come, it's like Christmas."

Erika Slife can be reached at eslife@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6690.

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