Sleepless in Sudan breaks the news that Humanitarian Air Service, the no-cost “airline” operated by the UN’s World Food Programme to deliver aid workers to refugee camps throughout the Darfur region of Sudan, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
An earlier post from Sleepless details the unique service provided by HAS – no tickets, baggage delivered to the tarmac, and a ticketing system involving a list where you can add your name and hope there’s a seat on the plane for you.
HAS is out of fuel, and has halted most of its services. As a result, Sleepless reports:
No more flights, no visitors or new arrivals, no supplies. No visiting finance manager to come and pay local salaries, no spare parts and no computers or other desperately awaited gadgets delivered by hand from Khartoum. At least food aid has been pre-positioned in most locations, and some cargo flights are still going ahead for now.
Guess the high price of gasoline is affecting all of us… One wonders how little money would be involved with providing adequate fuel supplies to HAS and how this would compate to US military expenditure in Iraq or Afghanistan.
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