The Volunteer Pilots Taking Abortion Patients Where They Need to Go

Elevated Access organizes volunteer pilots to fly abortion patients across the country— here's how it works

Illustration by Casey Beifuss, based on a photo courtesy of Kira Lima/Elevated Access

Mike Bonanza is a pilot—even when he’s off the clock. In his free time, he relaxes and unwinds by flying, because this requires “just enough concentration where I can’t think about other stuff,” he tells Abortion, Every Day.

Flying isn’t just his job and his hobby of choice—it’s also the main vehicle for his advocacy. As Executive Director of Elevated Access, Bonanza—along with Manager of Flight Coordination Kira Lima and a network of volunteer pilots—transports clients seeking abortion or gender-affirming care across the U.S. with free flights. Elevated Access works closely with local abortion funds, over 100 health and advocacy organizations, and their founding partner, Midwest Access Coalition.

Bonanza launched Elevated Access in 2022, but he first started offering volunteer flights in 2021—because, even before bans, distance from one’s nearest clinic has always been a challenge.

Bonanza tells AED that the website went live just hours before the Dobbs ruling was leaked that May. Within days of Dobbs, over 500 pilots expressed interest in volunteering—with many sharing personal stories and connections to abortion.

Right now, key routes to accessing abortion are facing serious threats—including interstate travel. Counties across Texas are enacting ‘travel ban’ ordinances that create civil penalties for helping women cross state lines; and states like Idaho and Tennessee have passed hotly contested legislation to criminalize the ‘abortion trafficking’ of teens.

Then there are informal travel bans already exist: AED recently reported on Child Protective Services stopping at least one minor from traveling for abortion by separating her from her mom. And for undocumented communities, travel has always been precarious due to paperwork and border checkpoints—all the more so amid escalating ICE presence.

At the same time, with mounting threats to telemedicine medication abortion, activists are preparing for a reality where more people could be forced to travel across state lines for care. Bonanza and Lima say that they and their volunteer network are rising to the challenge—and, with their dedicated team of lawyers, covering their legal bases and staying up-to-date with the constantly changing laws, too.

Here’s AED’s conversation with Bonanza and Lima about what an average volunteer flight entails, their passengers’ (and pilots’!) stories, what’s bringing them joy, and more.

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AED: How did you realize you wanted to be a pilot?

MB: The long-story-short is, my dad had been a pilot. And just recreationally, we flew together off and on as I was growing up. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse with giving me the airplane he owned—that he would let me fly if I just paid for the gas. You couldn’t get a better deal than that. After some more training, I got a lot more into aviation, I’ve got a commercial certificate and I’m a flight instructor too.

KL: My dad was also a pilot and he inspired me. I was around aviation my whole childhood. I got my pilot license when I was in high school.

AED: How did you get involved in the abortion rights and reproductive justice movement?

MB: The origins of Elevated Access are in an anti-racism workshop my wife recommended that I attend as we were navigating our role after the murder of George Floyd, to be more active in breaking down white supremacy in our country. She had a cousin doing workshops and affinity groups.

In that space, I learned about reproductive justice. Before that, it hadn’t really occurred to me how people had to travel for abortion, I just thought, “Abortion is legal, why can’t someone get it?” I didn’t even realize people might need help getting to an abortion appointment.

So, I had this idea, but I started out volunteering with Midwest Access Coalition for over a year and we talked a lot with them—about security and privacy work, and this idea of pilots as a resource to transport people traveling for abortion. They were really interested in the idea. I started working on the organization and by April 2022, we had several viral moments on social media, which is how Kira got involved with us.

AED: Where were you when Roe was overturned? How did that affect the kind of work you wanted to do?

MB: At that point, I’d been around folks in the movement for a long time, we’d known the decision was coming for a long time. I made our website live on the night before Dobbs opinion leaked. I was getting ready for bed when it came out, checking the news. At that time, it was me and two other pilots. I knew we’d need more, so I reached out to a TikTok mutual friend asking for help making content, thinking maybe we could recruit four or five more pilots. It went viral, and by June 2022, we had over 500 pilots say they wanted to join our network.

I’ll let Kira speak to this—she was handling the vetting and values-alignment checks with volunteers and working closely with them.

KL: Every single pilot has a different story and reason they want to do this—most of which is they’re upset. We have some pilots that have daughters and want to do what’s best for them, or pilots who have had abortions themselves. So many different reasons across the board, but always this underlying desire to help people wanting to solve the problem that we’re all navigating in the way we, as pilots, can.

MB: Obviously many are more liberal or progressive, but we also have some libertarians because they believe the government shouldn’t be telling people what to do with their bodies. Another of our pilots, his daughter is a doctor at an abortion clinic and his other kid is trans, and we also help people travel for gender-affirming care. Everyone’s got a personal story.

AED: What does a typical trip serving traveling abortion patients entail? Where are you typically flying to and from?

KL: We’re typically supporting people from states with limited or no access to abortion, red states, southern states, to states where it’s accessible. We have folks in Florida where the closest state to them is Virginia. But we’re going all over the country. There are sometimes people in rural California who need help going to larger cities for support. The routes vary based on the distance, the location.

MB: For some shorter distances, if it’s less than 200 miles or so, it’s pretty simple for a volunteer pilot to do. When it approaches 500 miles, we might do a relay where there are more than one pilots, one flies the first half, another pilot will pick them up and fly the second half. For other cases, when it gets to a certain distance, a smaller plane might make less sense, or the time or cost-saving gets lost compared to flying with an airline. We work with some airlines for those really long distances, like if a flight is over 1,000 miles.

I’ve done over 20 flights. One of the more recent ones involved a woman, her partner, their three-year-old, traveling to Illinois. We talked a bit over text a few days before. The woman said, “It’s my first airplane ride ever, I’m nervous but excited,” which we hear often. I offered to answer any questions. On the day of, she said she was getting too scared to fly. I told her she’s in charge here, I’m here to help, we can go back to her hometown if that’s what she wants.

We talk about what might make her more comfortable, like if we tried taking off, flying a little, and then landing. So, we try that, and she feels ready to fly, and I set an alarm to check in with her in 30 minutes. When the alarm goes off, I checked on her, and she was asleep with her daughter in her lap. Later she was completely comfortable, taking photos, and when we landed, I made sure they got to their Uber, they got to their appointment from there.

AED: Can you tell us about the traveling patients you typically serve? What are their stories? What are their circumstances?

KL: We work with partner organizations, and that’s how we’re being connected with most of these passengers who don’t have the resources, whether it’s access to a car or the funds to travel via flight, or to travel with their children or afford child care. They reach out to partner organizations, who pass on the request, and by the time they get to us, they’re just letting us know where they need to go, and we get those flights scheduled for them.

MB: We don’t hear much of a story, which is what we prefer because we’re all about privacy. When our partners reach out to us, we just trust they’re making good use of us as a resource. I will say: this isn’t just a red state, blue state thing. I flew a mom and a daughter in Illinois to a different part of the state because their car was not safe to drive out of town.

I’ve had passengers who already had four kids and wanted to be there for those kids. Sometimes people just sit in the back and fall asleep, some people tell their stories. The vast majority have never flown on a small plane before, and for most people, they haven’t even flown on an airline before. It’s one less stressor for them to not have to navigate TSA, layovers, gate changes—all those things where, if you’ve never flown before, could be pretty intimidating.

AED: What are some of the biggest challenges that go with this work?

MB: I’d love to be able to say, if we have a flight that’s needed from A to B, and we know near A, that we can say, “Yep, flight will happen.” But since we’re volunteers, there’s definitely a challenge of budget, schedules aligning, they can get off work. All of those are challenging, but that’s why we’re always recruiting, we attend aviation events everywhere and we’re always recruiting.

KL: The challenge is to expect the unexpected. We could have everything perfectly scheduled, then the passenger needs to shift to this day, or we need to shift because of weather, or a maintenance issue with the plane, or the passenger missed their appointment so we pivot by a day. We have to recognize these are real people and there are ebbs and flows, flexibility that’s needed. We know it’s an emotional experience for some, and definitely an unfair experience that they even have to travel at all for health care.

AED: We’re seeing more and more attacks on telemedicine abortion pills as well as attacks on abortion-related travel. What does that mean for your work?

MB: Obviously, it’s a lot to keep track of. The first couple years, we tried to keep track of it on our own internally, but got to the point, as we’re managing risk a little more, where we got attorneys from the Abortion Defense Network. We meet once a month to review things they’re aware of and talk about it. Or we’ll flag something to our attorney for their input. To date, we haven’t had to change any of our operations—and still follow all state and federal law. We’re always prepared with creative solutions, talking to our attorneys or other people in the movement.

AED: I can imagine that this is exhausting, emotionally difficult work. How do you unwind? What brings you joy as you do this work?

MB: For me, it’s definitely flying for fun. This weekend, I was flying a plane I don’t use for Elevated Access because it only goes 70 miles per hour. I’ll fly for fun to relax, get away from everything— one of the things I like about flying is that it takes just enough concentration that I can’t think about other stuff.

KL: I really love helping animals, too. I foster cats and kittens and dogs sometimes.

AED: How can our readers help Elevated Access?

MB: If you’re a pilot or know a pilot, we’re always recruiting!