The Humanitarian Pilots Initiative sends planes across the Atlantic to track down boats carrying migrants from Africa.
image: AFP
The Humanitarian Pilots Initiative brings together volunteers who travel the seas to rescue migrants crossing in makeshift boats.
Feb 28, 2026, 8:29 p.mFeb 28, 2026, 8:29 p.m
Michele CATTANI / afp
As he flies across the Atlantic to locate boats carrying migrants trying to reach Europe from the West African coast, an NGO pilot warns:
“With these strong seas and these strong winds, every hour of searching is crucial – the people on board could die from dehydration, heat stroke or hypothermia.”
The Humanitarian Pilots Initiative (HPI) is conducting an aerial surveillance operation over the Atlantic to locate boats in distress. The challenge: to locate 20-meter-long dugout boats in an area the size of Switzerland from a height of 450 meters.
translation
This text was written by our colleagues from French-speaking Switzerland and we translated it for you.
According to the Spanish non-governmental organization Caminando Fronteras, more than 3,000 migrants died in 2025 while trying to reach Spain illegally to seek a better future.
The NGO flies across the Atlantic in search of a refugee boat.
image: AFP
Most of the deaths occurred on the Atlantic route between Africa and the Spanish Canary Islands. As European countries limit the issuing of visas and increasingly control their borders, these migrants are forced to take this dangerous route.
HPI has been active in the Central Mediterranean since 2016, where it has contributed to the identification of more than a thousand boats to support the rescue vessels of international NGOs. HPI is currently on its third mission in nine months on the Atlantic route. An AFP journalist was able to accompany the team from this Swiss NGO for several days.
Omar El Manfalouty, one of the pilots of the Beechcraft 58 Baron of the NGO called Seabird, explains:
“The Atlantic Ocean is huge, it is impossible to cover the entire dugout canoe route.”
Samira is the mission’s tactical coordinator. Due to the threats the NGO faces in several European countries, she does not want to give her last name. She explains:
«We focus primarily on areas where other actors are not present, between 300 and 500 nautical miles from the Canary Islands. It is a gray area where help often arrives too late. From the air we are faster and have a better view than ships.”
As soon as a ship is spotted, an emergency alarm is triggered, involving nearby merchant vessels, and Salvamento Maritimo, the Spanish public maritime rescue organization, takes over the operations.
More than 100 people need to be rescued
It’s a morning in January, the NGO Alarm Phone issues a warning: a boat with 103 people, including 9 women and 3 children, that left Gambia is missing. HPI’s crew immediately prepares to leave.
Samira explains:
“Leaving Gambia means traveling a distance of about 1,000 nautical miles… If the engine (of the boat, editor’s note) breaks down on the first or eighth day, the search conditions change completely.”
On her tablet, she plans several routes off the coast of Nouadhibou in Mauritania, an area where boats usually head for the island of El Hierro – the westernmost of the Canary Islands. It is the furthest from the coast and the least monitored route.
HPI is also active in the Mediterranean:
Once the target area is reached, the aircraft descends below the clouds and follows straight, parallel flight paths. The three crew members have their eyes fixed on the windows.
The destination: a wooden dugout canoe covered with a tarpaulin and lying almost at the surface of the water because it is overloaded with passengers.
A new message appears on the tablet: A second boat that left Gambia 7 days earlier with 137 people on board is also missing.
The HPI pilot checks the oil level in his small aircraft.
image: AFP
With the strong wind and high waves, “it is possible that the boats have drifted away,” explains Samira. This has happened in the past with boats found in the Caribbean and South America. Without survivors.
After 3 consecutive days of flying and almost 3,800 nautical miles covered, there is no trace of the two boats. As of this writing, neither has achieved its goal.
«[Meine Mutter] had been looking for me for eleven days.”
Ousmane Ly
Near the reception center in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, Ousmane Ly, a 25-year-old Senegalese man who recently arrived in Gran Canaria by sea, looks at Las Canteras beach.
His fellow travelers, also Senegalese, took advantage of the sunny weather to take photos. The joy of arriving alive outweighs the difficulty of walking after being crammed into a dugout canoe for days. Their hands, arms and legs bear the marks of wounds caused by the salt water. Ousmane shows the cell phone that he was able to drain so that he could call his mother: “She’s been looking for me for eleven days.”
The Senegalese migrants were on the island of Gran Canaria.
image: AFP
He tells how the passengers were covered with a tarpaulin as soon as they got into the dugout canoe. Ousmane confides:
“I closed my eyes and thought of my mother Fatima.”
Ousmane Ly
The tarp – which protected from the sun during the day and the cold at night – was removed ten days later when the boat was rescued by Salvamento Maritimo. 108 people were on board. Two died before rescue. On the beach at Las Canteras, Ousmane continues to look out to sea.