The Corporate Angel Network (CAN) is recognizing the 35th anniversary of its first patient flight today. On Dec. 22, 1981, Safe Flight Instrument Corp. hosted that first flight, carrying a 22-year-old bone cancer patient home from treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The patient, Michael Burnett, who had been discharged in time for the holidays, traveled on board the Safe Flight King Air 200 from White Plains, New York, to Detroit. There, friends and family met him on the tarmac with holiday music in the background.
“The idea was simple,” said CAN, tracing the history of the organization. Pat Blum, a pilot and recovered cancer patient, believed that the large number of corporate aircraft landing at Westchester County Airport in White Plains could play a role in helping transport cancer patients. Blum, along with cancer survivor Jay Weinberg, brought the idea to Safe Flight president Leonard Greene, CAN said, and “his reaction was an enthusiastic thumbs up: ‘Go for it!’ And so the Corporate Angel Network was born.”
CAN became a non-profit organization dedicated to arranging travel for cancer patients using empty seats in business aircraft. In the ensuing 35 years, CAN has surpassed 51,000 cancer patient flights. This achievement comes thanks to the more than 500 major U.S. corporations that have shared empty seats aboard their aircraft. The organization runs with about three-dozen volunteers and a half-dozen paid staff, who work with patients, physicians, corporate flight departments and leading treatment centers to arrange more than 2,500 flights a year.
CAN noted the importance of the service, providing a more protective environment for patients who have weak immune systems. Exposure to germs could jeopardize lives. The flights further help soften the financial burden, CAN added. Health insurance will cover the cost of treatment, but typically not the cost of the travel to the treatment.
A number of patients have credited CAN for relieving that financial burden, for being a partner in their treatment, and for enabling participation in treatment they might not have otherwise been able to access.
