Ag-planes, jets and more churrascarias

Tuesday morning, Eduardo Roche from AgroFly picked up Marcelo, Gina and myself from the San Silverstre Hotel for a 50 km (30 miles) drive from Passo Fundo to Tapajara where one of AgroFly’s airstrips are located. AgroFly was started by the Bee (pronounced “Bay”) family from its seed company. Today, AgroFly operates five Ipanema aircraft and is part of a family of four companies with Bee being the parent company; included are also SupportFly and LogFly. 

SupportFly is a general and ag aviation maintenance company based in Passo Fundo. LogFly is an aviation management company that administers a new Brazilian Phenom 300 jet and a Citation II, along with a twin-engine Vulcanair manufactured in Italy, a G58 Baron, a Cirrus SR22 and Cessna 172 XP Hawk. The administration includes charter, maintenance provisions, scheduling and pilots. 

Members of AgroFly: Carlitos Bee on the left and Eduardo Roche on the right

After lunch, Eduardo arranged for a short VFR flight in the Vulcanair to return us from Passo Fundo to Cachoeira do Sul (CdoSul). Although the South American countries all along the 30th parallel has been experiencing an extreme drought with an almost total loss of corn, except as its value as silage and greater than 50% yield reductions with other crops, the Vulcanair was challenged finding its way back to CdoSul weaving between numerous rain showers. 

Gina has three sons; one is a lawyer, another a dentist and another is in medical school to be a family physician. Last year, while in CdoSul, Gina’s son, Tiago the dentist, gave my teeth a cleaning and check up. Tuesday night, again, Dr. Tiago cleaned my teeth and has offered to whiten “with a drill” (?) tooth number 12 on Thursday night. Tiago’s office is connected Gina’s house, but is very modern and relatively new. I graciously accepted his offer!   

Tuesday evening, after the teeth cleaning, I attended a churrascria at the home of Pelopidas and Roberta Bernardi. Roberta is also a dentist like Tiago, and Pelopidas owns PBA Aviation, which is an Ipanema dealer, as well as used aircraft sales. PBA Aviation sells ag-aircraft throughout the southern half of South America and is very successful. His father is Laudelino Bernardi, who has a flying service with about 10-12 Ipanemas working rice, corn and soybeans in CdoSul. Mr. Bernardi also has an ag-pilot school, Agricola Aviation Santos Dumont. His focus in all his decades of flying has been safety. With the company logging over 5,000 hours a season on average, training and spraying, the company, according to Pelopidas, has never “spilt blood”, meaning no pilot has ever been hurt flying for  Mr. Bernardi. 

The evening ended near midnight. Wednesday promises to be a busy day with a 500 km (300 miles) drive to Uruguaiana, Brazil. This is a large area for ag-aviation, very close to the Uruguayan and Argentine borders. Be sure to check back for the details. 

Ready to depart in a new $9M Phenom 300 (yeah, right!)

Until then, 
Keep Turning