The WFP chartered four flights from Kuala Lumpur to Davao, where the airport doesn’t have cargo equipment to serve big freighters. He says one of the more challenging recent airlifts involved flights to provide assistance in the Philippines following a typhoon last December.

Oleh Maslyukov heads the air-transport unit for the WFP and is in charge of planning the airlifts. In many cases, this involves flying into regions not served by passenger airlines and lacking passenger and cargo-handling infrastructure. The WFP/UNHAS provides humanitarian air service in 13 countries, working with relief agencies and the U.S. The WFP experienced a busy 2012, and 2013 is shaping up to be equally challenging.

In many cases, the agency is tasked with delivering food to regions that were fragile even before natural calamities struck. World Food Programme, which manages the United Nations Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS), is historically busy arranging airlifts to deliver desperately needed food, medicine and equipment to often remote regions of the world when natural disaster or political strife occur.

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