Pilot earns award for humanitarian flights

By LIZ MITCHELL - lmitchell@islandpacket.com

HILTON HEAD — Jack Schuler will use any excuse to fly, especially if he can help someone along the way.

The Hilton Head Island pilot has flown a man from Harrisburg, Pa., to Pittsburgh on a snowy Christmas Eve for liver transplant surgery the next day.

He has flown a battered woman to a shelter in Wilmington, N.C., to escape her abuser.

Most recently, he spent six months flying a Savannah resident to Raleigh, and then driving her the extra 45 minutes to Duke University for experimental cancer treatments.

In 2007, he flew 12 missions, more than any other Mercy Flight Southeast pilot in South Carolina. The organization has named Schuler its 2008 Pilot of the Year, an award based on the number of missions successfully completed.

Mercy Flight, a division of Air Charity Network, coordinates free air travel for children and adults with medical or humanitarian needs.

Schuler became a pilot in 1958 when he joined the U.S. Air Force. In 1960, while working for Piper Aircraft Inc., he bought a PA-30 Twin Comanche, the plane he still flies today.

In most situations, he flies his passengers one way and doesn’t have the opportunity to get to know them well. That changed when Schuler offered to take April Glover of Savannah to and from Duke for three-hour chemotherapy treatments.

The 26-year-old had gone to the doctor for persistent headaches and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After six months, she stopped the treatments. She died last year before the holidays. Schuler went to her funeral.