The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's private jet — which sat idle for nearly four months after it was the subject of controversy — recently started flying again.
On Sept. 27 it flew to Sacramento, Calif., to pick up a sample in a suspected human rabies case, and this month it made two round trips to Panama City, Panama, to deliver equipment to CDC investigators, according to flight records and the CDC.
The cost to taxpayers: $84,300 in flight time for the three trips, plus the $252,000 a month the CDC pays in a competitively bid contract for round-the-clock access to the Gulfstream III.
"I want to make absolutely crystal clear it's imperative CDC have access to a plane like this to do the very business of protecting health," said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.
So far in 2006, leasing and using the CDC jet has cost taxpayers nearly $3.5 million.
Skinner said the CDC needed to use the Gulfstream to transport equipment to Panama because of snafus with a private courier and a commercial airline.
The CDC had sent a team to Panama on Oct. 3 to investigate a mystery illness that caused nearly two dozen deaths. The team helped discover that a toxic chemical had somehow been added to government-made cough syrups.
But before the CDC's scientists could begin sleuthing, they needed to have five boxes of scientific equipment transported to Panama City. Skinner said the CDC first called a private courier company, which said it would take three to four days to deliver the equipment. He would not identify the company.
So on Oct. 3, the CDC sent the five boxes, along with CDC staff, on a commercial airline flight to Panama City.
But the boxes never arrived in Panama and were returned to the CDC on Oct. 4, Skinner said. He would not identify the airline.
"At that point we decided to use our plane to fly the materials as well as a person to handle the materials," Skinner said. And while the jet was in Panama, it was used to pick up some samples. Flight costs were $27,300, he said.
On Oct. 10, the CDC used the jet to fly more supplies from Atlanta to Panama. "The reason we didn't use commercial airlines again is they were not able to tell us what happened the first time, so we decided not to chance it," he said. The flight fees for the second round trip were $28,200, he said.
The Sept. 27 flight from Atlanta to Sacramento cost $28,800 in flight fees, Skinner said.
The trip was necessary because state health officials there could not determine whether a man had rabies and needed the CDC to quickly run more sensitive tests to determine whether he should undergo experimental treatment. The man's rabies test was negative.
"When you're talking about rabies," Skinner said, "minutes can mean the difference between life and death."
To reach staff writer Alison Young, call 404-526-7372.
