Idalo Masi unloads the puppies from the plane
Jeff Luiza gets licked by one of the puppies he rescued from South Carolina.
Granola bars and sandwiches. Check.
Fleece blankets with black Labrador prints. Check.
About a dozen crates to fill with puppies from a high-kill South Carolina animal shelter. Check.
Jeff Luizza placed an iPad between him and his trusted co-pilot, Idola Masi, in the cockpit of the eight-passenger airplane. Its screen displayed the day’s route: Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, Pittston Twp., to Florence, South Carolina.
The Old Forge men checked their plane’s dials, firing up the twin engines one by one. Mr. Luizza gave a quick thumbs-up and the plane rolled toward the runway, gathering speed as wind rushed around its wings.
With a couple of bumps and a little bit of ear-popping turbulence, the pilots had the plane airborne by 9 a.m. on Saturday.
The day’s mission: save 29 puppies and bring them back to Northeast Pennsylvania.
They arrived in Florence, South Carolina, just in time for Denise Flowers to pull up with an SUV full of rescued puppies — tiny, squealing yellow Labradors, a litter of black Labradors and beagle puppies who haven’t quite grown into their flopping ears and large paws. Most came from the Williamsburg County Animal Shelter in Kingstree, South Carolina.
Every one of the dogs would be dead if not for the mission.
Instead, the pups dozed in crates spread throughout Mr. Luizza’s King Air Twin Turboprop, many of them on their way to meet eager families from Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Mountaintop and elsewhere.
Twelve of the puppies on Saturday’s flight were transported to the Northeast PA Pet Fund and Rescue in Scranton. The rest had been placed with adoptive families.
Mr. Luizza, with the help of his wife, Melissa Sanders-Luizza, has flown his personal plane around the country for years, rescuing nearly 1,500 dogs and placing them in homes or rescues throughout Northeast Pennsylvania and near Daytona, Florida, where the Luizzas live 6 months out of the year.
“I love to fly and I love the animals,” Mr. Luizza said.
Frequent flier
Mr. Luizza has been fascinated by flying since age eight when his mother gave him a multi-band radio that picked up signals from the Avoca air traffic controllers.
By age 16, Mr. Luizza earned his pilot’s license and later bought his first plane, a Cessna Skyhawk.
“I bought her from a car dealer in Hazleton,” Mr. Luizza said. “The radios in it were so old they had tubes.”
Mr. Luizza, former owner of Penn Warranty, has since owned 60 planes in his lifetime. Now retired, he spends most of his time placing dogs with families and planning “missions” to pick them up, wherever they may be.
Ms. Sanders-Luizza supports the missions from home base, whether they’re staying in Old Forge or Daytona. She waits with a group of “helpers” to bathe the dogs when they arrive, cleaning and pampering them before their owners come to fetch them.
“All they want is love,” Ms. Sanders-Luizza said. “I didn’t used to like dogs — I got bit when I was little. Now I couldn’t live without them.”
The dogs’ new owners chatted on Facebook in the week leading up to Saturday’s flight, expressing their excitement to meet the newest members of their families.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of work that goes into it,” he said.
Mr. Luizza keeps in constant contact with people like Ms. Flowers who can retrieve dogs from the shelters and screen them for any common illnesses that might infect other puppies during a flight.
Once a group of at least 20 are cleared for adoption, Mr. Luizza posts pictures of the dogs to his Facebook page. He requires a veterinarian’s reference and a letter from the landlord of any potential adopter.
Then Mr. Luizza plans a flight, something he’s done enough times to have “down to a science,” he said.
“We leave with a bunch of empty crates, transfer the dogs, fuel up and come back,” he said.
Mr. Masi, a flight instructor and mechanic at the local airport-based Aviation Technologies, flies as Mr. Luizza’s copilot for every dog mission out of Northeast Pennsylvania.
Dog is their copilot
The pilots met little turbulence on the way to South Carolina, skimming between two layers of tame, white clouds.
Mr. Luizza showed Mr. Masi photos of the puppies on his iPad during the flight. They traded tales of past flights above the thrum of the engines and the chatter of air traffic controllers over the radio.
After 2½ hours, they descended onto the runway of Florence Regional Airport, where Ms. Flowers greeted them.
“I put 60 (puppies) on his plane one time,” Ms. Flowers said. “It’s all for those puppies.”
Ms. Flowers credits country singer Willie Nelson for getting her into the animal rescue game. She used to rescue horses at her farm.
“My farm was a sister farm to his,” she said. “The dogs just kind of fell into place.”
Mr. Luizza usually transports puppies small enough to fit in an airline crate. He has transported breeds like Labrador mixes, beagles, young shepherds, Catahoola leopard dogs and various hound mixes.
Sometimes larger dogs make the flights, too. Mr. Luizza said he once picked up a 180-pound St. Bernard — and that was underweight.
The 29 puppies on Saturday’s flight rested in their crates, either sound asleep or quietly content, even during a band of stormy weather that buffeted the plane back and forth, jostling the passengers inside. It wasn’t until the plane came within 20 minutes of landing that they started to stir.
A black Lab puppy tussled with the others in his crate, squeaking out his best attempt at a playful bark. One of the yellow Labs gave a high-pitched howl from the back of the plane while dogs nearby perked up, searching for the source of the sound.
Mr. Luizza and Mr. Masi kept the plane steady as it approached the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport runway around 5 p.m. The dogs yipped and pawed at the inside of their plastic crates as the plane descended and made a smooth landing on the tarmac.
As the two pilots loaded the puppies into a pickup truck, Mr. Luizza had a message for the new dog owners before leaving the airport.
“Hi, your new kids are here!”
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