Airborne Monthly Factsheet June 2020

This factsheet outlines a summary of distress cases witnessed by Airborne with Moonbird and Seabird. In June 2020, we flew 14 missions, for 74 hours 01 minute. We spotted more than 953 persons in distress. Download Full Report Overview of the distress cases, empty boats and dead bodies spotted Italian Search-and-Rescue (SAR) zone 2 distress cases…

While Sea-Watch 3 already rescued 119 people in three separate distress cases, Moonbird today spots more people at risk of drowning.

Thursday morning, the Sea-Watch 3 was alerted by our civil search aircraft Moonbird of multiple distress cases and immediately engaged in the successful rescue of 60 survivors on board a rubber boat in international waters. Before conducting a second rescue of 17 people, Sea-Watch found an empty fibreglass boat and witnessed 150 more people being…

Sea-Watch reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird manages to resume operations, while death rate climbs to record high

More than 3 months, the reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird, operated by Sea-Watch in cooperation with the Swiss Humanitarian Pilots Initiative, was prevented from operation by the Maltese government without providing any legal ground. With the crackdown on civil sea rescue, meanwhile, the death rate at Europe’s sea border reached its record high of one out of…

Rubber boat with about 80 people in distress off Libya – EU authorities refuse assistance – Survivors abducted to Libya

Yesterday, Sunday, the crew of the surveillance aircraft Colibri witnessed once again a dramatic case of failure to render assistance by the Italian authorities. A rubber boat with over 80 refugees was in distress at sea for over 9 hours and was finally towed back to war-torn Libya by the country’s so-called Coast Guard. At…