Profile: Rachal Smart, Pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service

The fourth Flight Control map is set in the Australian Outback – make sure you give way to emergency landings by the Royal Flying Doctor Service! We caught up with Rachal Smart, one of the RFDS pilots, to find out more about what it’s like to live and work in the Outback.

Rachal Smart knew that she wanted to be a pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service even before she started flying. Her accomplished career spans more than nineteen years, including six years training commercial pilots for international airlines such as Qantas and Cathay Pacific. Fourteen months ago her dream came true – Rachal and her husband Michael, who is also a pilot for the RFDS, were selected to join the RFDS Western Operations Derby base.

Derby is located in Western Australia’s remote Kimberley region, over 1800km from the state’s capital, Perth. After living in Adelaide most of their lives, Rachal and Michael were ready for a sea change and decided to relocate their young family to this small town, with a more sedate pace of life and fresh country air. Derby is also a great base for exploring the incredible natural beauty of the vast, unspoiled Kimberley region.

It’s the great open spaces of Australia’s Outback that make the RFDS such a vital service for the people who live and work away from the densely populated coastal centres such as Sydney and Melbourne. At over 7.6 million square kilometers, Australia is the world’s sixth largest country by landmass, and 80% of this area (equivalent to almost twice the landmass of India!) is serviced by the RFDS. People in remote locations like mining towns or cattle stations are often hundreds if not thousands of kilometers from the nearest hospital. When these people require assistance, the RFDS and its dedicated team are there to help.

Each year, the RFDS flies an incredible 23 million kilometers, attends 250,000 patients and undertakes 35,000 aerial evacuations with 54 aircraft Australia wide. While it receives some government funding, the RFDS relies entirely on donations from the public for the purchase, maintenance and repair of aircraft.

Most RFDS flights are crewed by a pilot and nurse, and sometimes a doctor if the patient is critically unwell. While Rachal was studying to be a pilot at Parafield Airport Campus, she paid her way by working as a nurse assistant which she says taught her valuable people and caring skills. A well as flying the aircraft, it is very important for the pilots to show care and compassion, and appreciate the work of the medical crew in the back of the aircraft. “People are always so happy to see us”, Rachal said. “We’re there to take care of their loved ones, and when they give us a pat on the back or a hug to say thank you, it’s the best feeling in the world to know we’re able to help them.”

For Rachal, a tough part of the job is when she has to attend avoidable road accidents. “Especially during tourist season, we sometimes come across people who have got into trouble due to the completely different driving conditions up here. You can get cattle walking on the roads, and the odd Kangaroo jump out in front of you. And this adds to the complexity of driving on narrow corrugated dirt roads. It’s awful when someone’s holiday in this beautiful part of the world gets cut short – it’s made me much more aware when I’m driving myself, just to be that little more careful.”

Rachal’s iPhone is one of the tools in her flight bag. She usually plans her flights on a desktop computer using NAIPS, a system that provides information such as weather conditions and area briefings. NAIPS allocates a number to her flight briefing, which she can then access through the NAIPS application on her iPhone – so if there are unexpected delays she can adjust the plan and resubmit it for updates without having to find a computer, a huge advantage in remote locations. She also uses the iPhone’s camera for the occasional happy snap, and if there are extended delays on the ground she can sometimes squeeze in a game of Flight Control… for the record, Rachal’s best scores are 65 (Classic), 86 (Hawaii), and 16 landings on the Carrier. As Rachal says, “it’s dismal – I’m definitely not a navy pilot!”

We’d like to thank the Royal Flying Doctor Service for their awesome work, and for working with us to bring you the Outback map and a small taste of the life of a RFDS pilot. Please visit the RFDS web site for more information. You might be interested in:

• more real life stories like Rachal’s
• tracking some RFDS flights in WA – maybe even one piloted by Rachal!
• making a donation

Photo credits: Rachal Smart and the generous Creative Commons community on Flickr: Zest-pk, tm-tm, NeilsPhotography, Don Pugh and Phillie Casablanca.