MAF has provided access to the Gospel and life-sustaining resources by providing flights, communications and logistical support for missionaries, local churches, and villages since 1948. MAF provides vital aviation and radio communications services to national churches, Christian missions, and NGOs ministering in Ecuador, as well as to jungle villages.

The country lacks a national communications infrastructure, and all-weather roads are practically non-existent.

39% of all MAF flights are medically related, including flights for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health, which sends healthcare teams into the jungle to provide rural health education programmes. MAF’s chaplain ministry, established in 2005, impacts hundreds of patients and their family members each year.

Since the 1960s the Church has grown significantly, though many people groups integrate the beliefs and practices of animistic cults with Catholicism.

Today, MAF operates a fleet of five aircraft from two bases: Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, and Shell, on the edge of the Amazon basin.

Throughout the jungle, MAF communications networks enable villages to communicate with one another and with the outside world.

Missions and local churches co-ordinate evangelism and discipleship programmes, request medical emergency flights, and bring isolated communities together.

In recent years, MAF has been working closely with its sister organisation, Alas de Socorro del Ecuador (ADSE), to find solutions for sustainable Ecuadorian operations.