Pilots needed to transport survivors of human trafficking

A new organization is looking for volunteer general aviation pilots to transport survivors of human trafficking.

Freedom Aviation Network’s mission is to provide “safe, efficient and rapid air transportation for survivors of human trafficking.”

“Our goal is to eliminate the transportation barrier for survivors of human trafficking and their advocates,” said Jared Miller, who co-founded the Nashville-based non-profit with Stephanie Lamar.

Why is it needed?

During a recent fundraising event at Azure Flight Support at Smyrna Airport (KMQY) in Tennessee, more than 150 people showed up to learn about Freedom Aviation Network, including general aviation pilots.

Lamar, who is a regional airline pilot and CFI, said most pilots are confused about the organization’s mission.

“The No. 1 thing I hear from pilots is ‘I don’t understand what you are doing,’” Lamar said. “A lot of people don’t understand what human trafficking really is and what it looks like.”

Awareness about human trafficking is growing, but it’s still an invisible epidemic to most Americans.

The statistics are sobering: In 2021, 10,359 instances of human trafficking were reported to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline involving 16,554 individual victims.

“Shocking as these numbers are, they are likely only a fraction of the actual problem,” say officials with the Polaris Project, which operates the hotline.

When most people think of human trafficking, their thoughts automatically go to sex work. And that is part of it, but there’s also forced labor.

“Labor trafficking most often begins with a simple job offer. It becomes trafficking when pay or working conditions are abusive and the worker cannot quit or complain because the boss is threatening them or exploiting their desperate economic circumstances,” Polaris officials explain.

Victims can’t find relief away from the job, as sometimes the person trafficking them are their own parents, legal guardians, spouses, or significant others.

So why don’t they just leave?

It’s a question Lamar hears from pilots a lot.

“They want to know ‘why are they stuck? I don’t understand why they can’t just get away,’” she notes.

Fear is a big reason. Traffickers threaten victims, often with physical harm, but also with economic abuse or deportation.

Immigrants are vulnerable to labor trafficking because many have come to the United States due to violence or severe poverty in their home countries. That makes threats like “if you complain, I will call ICE” extremely powerful, Polaris Project officials said. Additionally, many labor trafficking victims are bound to traffickers by debt and the belief that even the minimal amount they are being paid is better than their other options.

Additionally, it’s very common for the traffickers to take away the victim’s identification. That means they can’t get on an airline flight to escape.

“The trafficker probably has their identification and they don’t have any money,” Lamar says. “They just can’t get away. If they go somewhere, like to a friend’s house, the trafficker’s going to find them there. Then their situation is going to be worse.”

But that’s not happening in my community, right?

That’s another misconception Lamar hears a lot from general aviation pilots.

“It could be a house in your neighborhood,” Lamar says. “This isn’t happening away from you, you’re just not aware of it.”

How GA Can Help

According to the Polaris Project, 54% of human trafficking survivors say transportation is a barrier to leaving.

Miller and Lamar saw this through their past volunteer work with anti-trafficking organizations and shelters.

“In my work with anti-trafficking, I noticed that transportation was the number one cumbersome, tedious, time-consuming, and costly task that we had to do as agencies across the globe,” Miller says. “I became very frustrated with how challenging transportation was, so we set out to figure out how general aviation can be used to eliminate the transportation barrier.”

He called Lamar, telling her “general aviation holds the key to helping,” but he wasn’t quite sure how.

That’s where her aviation expertise — and connections — came in. They initially considered asking already established public benefit flying organizations to take over the missions, but it is just too big an issue for them to take on with what they are already doing, the pair notes.

That led to the creation of Freedom Aviation Network in October 2022.

Similar to other public benefit organization, like Angel Flight, Freedom Aviation Network acts as the conduit between the person who needs help and the pilot.

All requests for transportation are referrals from an advocate or agency. Once a request comes in, Freedom Aviation Network sends an email out to eligible pilots to let them know about the mission.

While volunteers can fly any kind of aircraft, including experimental, ideally the airplane needs four seats as the survivor is accompanied by an advocate.

Pilot requirements include 250 hours flight time but, more important, “a willingness to volunteer,” Lamar says, noting that includes the flight planning and paying for the costs of the flight.

Flights can range from short hops, to 250 miles, to across the country.

“Obviously, that is dependent upon your plane. If you’ve got a Cessna 182, you’re not going to want to go as far as people who have a King Air,” Lamar says. “And we need both types of airplanes and pilots.”

Sometimes pilots are taking survivors home, sometimes to a rehab or hospital facility. The pilot’s mission ends at the airport and the advocate is charged with getting the survivor where they are going safely.

But Is It Safe For the Pilot?

If you’ve seen the movie “Taken,” you know that Liam Neeson rescues his daughter and her friend from human traffickers by beating up the bad guys.

General aviation pilots don’t have to worry about anything like that, Freedom Aviation Network officials say.

“That’s handled by the agencies — they’re used to dealing with this on a daily basis,” Lamar says.

She notes that in some cases survivors are brought to the airport with law enforcement or an armed guard and, sometimes, that armed guard will fly with the survivor. A pilot can decide if they want to take on that kind of a mission.

And then there’s the obvious security of an airport that acts as a barrier to anyone who might follow the survivor to the airport.

“In my experience, the trafficker or pimp isn’t going to come into an airport door, even if it’s a small airport, because that would be absolutely foolish of them to make a stink at an airport,” Miller says. “They would lose all their business, they would lose their livelihood, they would be incarcerated immediately. It would just be foolish of them to come to an airport.”

Want to Help?

As of May 2023, the organization had 55 volunteer pilots in about 16 states, including Tennessee, California, Maryland, and Arizona.

But it needs more as its phone is ringing off the hook with requests from states where it doesn’t have any pilots yet.

“We’ve had calls from Florida and Texas. Right now, we’re actually managing a flight from Minnesota to Los Angeles. And what happens if we get a call from Billings, Montana, and we don’t have a pilot there? We need to be nationwide as quickly as possible,” Miller says.

The two added that jet owners and charter companies also could be a huge help, noting that in one instance they had to charter a Citation jet.

“Charter companies can donate empty flights to us as needed,” Lamar says. “If there’s a way to collaborate, that would be a lifesaver in a lot of cases.”

You can find out more about being a volunteer pilot at FreedomAviationNetwork.org.

Want to help the cause but not ready to fly? The organization needs volunteers in other areas, such as social media, technology, and more.

And, of course, as a non-profit, donations are always welcome.

“We are growing a lot faster than we anticipated,” Miller says. “We’re going to need staff and we’re going to need other things in place, so funding is going to be a big issue in the next year for start-up costs.”