SOUTH SUDAN EVACUATIONS OVER CHRISTMAS PERIOD

Global aircraft charter provider, Air Charter Service, has been providing aircraft charters for evacuations out of South Sudan on behalf of oil and gas companies, including one particularly high stakes rescue on Christmas day. Justin Bowman, ACS’s Vice Chairman, described the efforts his team made in the early hours on the 25th December: “We had previously evacuated other workers for this client out of Juba, but 32 had been cut off from help in Leer City and unable to reach the comparative safety of the capital. The ACS team worked through the night to source an available and suitable aircraft that could fly them to safety quickly – the local airstrip is not of a great standard and therefore a challenge to fly into and out of. The best available option was to get them onto an aircraft that could take them as far as Kenya and then repatriate them back to Europe. “The workers had been shot at, caught up in a protest and nearly kidnapped so to finally get them to Nairobi and then back home was a huge relief. I must take this opportunity to praise those members of ACS’s team who worked tirelessly through the night to ensure these people’s safety. They are a credit to our company and the way in which we operate.”