2 days ago
EXCLUSIVE I work as a rescue pilot in one of the world's most isolated jungles... I help those who have never accessed medical care and don't know what electricity is - people never believe what I've seen
Growing up, Mark Palm always knew he wanted to fly. It was in his blood. His grandfather was a World War II pilot, his uncles took to the skies, and his cousin served in the military as an aviator.
But while most boys with an aviation pedigree dream of fast jets and high-flying careers, Mark's path took an unexpected turn - one that would lead him deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, where he would build a life-saving rescue service from scratch.
Mark met villagers who had lost loved ones because they couldn't get to a hospital in time. Women died in childbirth. Children succumbed to snake bites. Malaria, tuberculosis, and infections ran rampant, but there was no way to get medical supplies to the remote settlements.
'We heard again and again about people dying just trying to reach help,' Mark told the MailOnline. 'Hospitals were two, three days away by canoe.'
That's where his dream was born.
His mission would see him ferrying desperate and sick villagers from their remote villages buried in the depths of the wilderness to the nearest hospital and cut the days-long trip down to one hour.
Mark and his team at Samaritan Aviation have now delivered more than 100,000 pounds of medical supplied to over 20 aid stations and he has been the lead pilot on over 1,500 life-saving flights in the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea.
It comes as The World Health Organisation recently declared a polio outbreak in Papua New Guinea and called for an 'immediate' vaccination campaign.
When polio first returned to Papua New Guinea a few years ago, Samaritan Aviation partnered with the World Health Organisation to distribute vaccines to children living along the Sepik River.
Without their planes, many of those children would have had no access to life-saving immunisations.
Operating seven days a week, Mark and his team have transformed emergency healthcare in the region.
'We've been able to make that dream a reality,' he says.
'We've turned three-day journeys into one-hour flights. We've flown thousands of medevac missions - pregnant mothers in distress, snakebite victims, malaria patients, children injured in tribal fights. We've delivered medical supplies to remote villages. We've stopped disease outbreaks in their tracks.'
But it all started when he was a teenager in California. His father, a minister, ran a homeless mission in Santa Cruz, and Mark would spend hours serving food to those in need.
At 16, he crossed the border into Mexico on a mission trip, where he helped build homes for impoverished families.
It was there, amid the dust and poverty, that Mark had an experience that changed his life forever.
'I just felt God speak to me,' the 50-year-old told MailOnline.
'It was like a conversation, as clear as we're talking right now. And He told me: "Mark, I want you to use your passion for people and aviation to share my love in a remote part of the world".'
Mark had always planned on following in his grandfather's footsteps and joining the military.
But after that moment, his vision shifted. Instead of war zones, he began thinking about isolated communities. Instead of combat missions, he imagined emergency rescues.
A few years later, at a flight school in Florida, fate brought him together with a kindred spirit - a fellow aviation enthusiast who had been born in Papua New Guinea, the second largest island in the world.
The two struck up a friendship, bonding over their love of flying, surfing, and adventure.
Before long, they had a plan and spent a summer in Papua New Guinea, a country where more than 80 per cent of the population lives in remote villages with little or no access to healthcare, electricity, or running water.
When Mark arrived in 1994, aged 19, he was stunned.
'It was like stepping into another world,' he says. 'People were living in bamboo huts with no electricity, no running water, no roads - just endless jungle and rivers.'
But what struck him most were the tragic stories.
The nearest hospitals were up to three days away, tribal fighting was an ongoing issue, people we rapidly giving up, and there was a scarcity of medical supplies.
Mark and his friend started asking a simple question: What if we could turn a three-day journey into a one-hour flight?
Back in the US, Mark threw himself into training. He studied aircraft mechanics, earned his pilot's license, and began forming a plan.
He had discovered that Papua New Guinea had one major hospital serving a vast, roadless expanse along the Sepik River - a 700-mile stretch of water teeming with villages but utterly lacking in medical infrastructure.
The solution seemed obvious - a seaplane. But there was just one problem, everyone told him it was impossible.
'There hadn't been a floatplane there in 40 years,' Mark says.
'People told us the river was too dangerous - crocodiles, flooding, unpredictable currents. They said we'd never survive, that we had to charge people for flights, that there was no way we could fund it.'
But Mark refused to give up.
He and his wife Kirsten launched Samaritan Aviation, a nonprofit dedicated to flying emergency medical missions - completely free of charge.
In the early days, their fundraising efforts were discouraging. They sent out letters to 330 potential donors, expecting a wave of support. They received just $330 in return.
Undeterred, they pressed on, telling their story to anyone who would listen.
Over the years, they secured partnerships with the Papua New Guinea government and health officials.
And finally, in 2010 - 10 years after first conceiving the idea - Mark, Kirsten, and their three young children boarded a plane to Papua New Guinea. Their seaplane followed in a shipping container.
'When we landed, we had nothing but a dream and a plane,' Mark says. 'We had to rebuild the aircraft from scratch, then fly it to our new base in Wewak.'
Then, on Good Friday, 2010, he got the first emergency call.
A woman had been in labor for three days and there was no way for her to reach the hospital.
Mark loaded a stretcher into the plane and flew through rough weather, landing on the Sepik River in the rain.
As he watched a group of villagers carry the woman toward the aircraft, he quickly realised how serious the situation was - she was completely unconscious.
'I wasn't a doctor. I was a pilot, a mechanic, a musician - I had no medical background,' Mark says. 'And now I was flying my first medevac, with a dying woman just a foot away from me.'
The short flight felt like an eternity. Mark kept glancing at the woman whose head was laying just a foot away from him in the tiny aircraft - but all he could do was fly as fast as possible.
When they landed, an ambulance rushed her into surgery. Mark went home, unsure if she had survived.
The next day, he returned to the hospital with his wife and kids to find her sitting up in bed, holding a healthy baby boy.
'It's a long story, but they ended up giving him my name and so the first patient we ever flew in was Antonio - the mum who survived, and then the baby was baby Mark which is such an honour'.
Fifteen years later, that baby, Baby Mark, is almost 15 years old. His mother, Antonia, recently became a grandmother.
'That's an entire generation we've impacted,' Mark says. 'And that's just one of the thousands of lives we've touched.'
Fifteen years later, Samaritan Aviation has become a lifeline for thousands of people.
The team has also expanded. Mark and Kirsten spent a decade in Papua New Guinea, but today, Samaritan Aviation has three seaplanes and a full-time staff of pilots, mechanics, and medical personnel who live there, raising their own financial support from friends and churches.
'They move over for two years at a time, bringing their families with them,' Mark explains.
Right now, Samaritan Aviation is building eight houses and a training center to accommodate their growing team.
But their work isn't just about flying patients from point A to point B.
'A lot of the people we pick up have never left their villages,' Mark says. 'They've never seen the ocean, electricity, cars, running water. And now, in the middle of a medical crisis, we're taking them away from everything they know'.
That's why Samaritan Aviation doesn't just drop patients at the hospital and leave.
'We have a team of Papua New Guineans who come in every day. They feed the patients we bring in, they clothe them if they need clothes, they pray with them, they love on them.'
For Mark, this is what it's all about.
'It's more than just rescue flights,' he says. 'It's about being part of their lives when they're at their lowest, showing them love, giving them hope.'
Samaritan Aviation now serves 120 villages - over 500,000 people - on the Sepik River. And they're not stopping there.
'We're expanding to the other side of the island,' Mark says.
'In the Gulf Province, there are hundreds of thousands of people with no roads, no medical access. Their hospitals are two, three days away. They've been forgotten.'
After years of groundwork, Samaritan Aviation has secured partnerships with the Gulf government and Gulf Christian Services, which runs hospitals in remote villages.
They've just built a floating dock in one of the region's most isolated areas, where water levels rise and fall by nine feet a day.
'We had a team out there for a month in January, dredging a landing area in the swamp,' Mark says.
'And I'm going back in May to bring a plane over and start medical flights.'
It's a major milestone.
'For me, it's incredible to see how this has grown,' he says. 'We're celebrating 25 years as an organisation this year. 15 years in Papua New Guinea. And now, we get to take everything we've learned and offer that same hope to even more people.'
When Mark first dreamed of flying, he imagined adventure, excitement, maybe even military glory.
Instead, he found a calling - one that has saved lives, transformed communities, and proven that one plane, one vision, and one unshakable belief can change the world.
