Aircraft in the static park at Farnborough, le Bourget or Singapore generally have nothing else to do but stand and look-belligerent and dangerous in the case of military machines, beautiful if they're business jets and big potential cash cows if they're offerings for the commercial world.

But on Tuesday the Flying Hospital-the appropriately equipped Lockheed L-1011 looming over the static park's eastern end-was actually functioning and treating its first two patients from the Farnborough show. Both had suffered minor injuries in separate accidents among the crowd. One had an injured ankle and the other a damaged foot. Both were X-rayed on board; after being appropriately strapped up one hobbled on his way while the other was driven home in a local ambulance.

It was very minor stuff for the Flying Hospital, run by an eponymous non-profit organization from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Bought by the foundation out of desert storage after a long career with Air Canada, the TriStar underwent an 18-month conversion program before becoming operational with its first mission to El Salvador in May 1996.

Since then it has completed seven missions involving both staff and volunteer medical, nursing and dental personnel to countries ranging from Ukraine to Brazil and Bolivia, as well as repeat missions to El Salvador.

Between missions the L-1011 "rests" in the benign and non-corrosive desert environment of Tucson, Arizona.

As a medical facility the Flying Hospital has an operating theater able with capacity for surgery on three patients at a time. It has hosted as many as 30 operations in a single day. The operating theater is accompanied by; a pre- and post-operative recovery area accommodating up to 12 patients; an ear, eye, nose and throat facility; and a dental station.

There is a seating and educational section accommodating up to 67 people. The foundation insists that its work is not simply compassionate relief missions but also teaching. Missions are invariably undertaken only in conjunction with local medical professionals who are invited aboard to assist, to advise, and themselves to learn.

The Flying Hospital is neither equipped nor intended to function as a casevac aircraft but as an autonomous surgical and medicare unit to operate for considerable times purely on its own resources, its APU and GPUs providing power when it can't be connected to a reliable local supply.

By its nature, the aircraft is more often seen in undeveloped countries seriously short of good medical facilities than in countries where good hospitals abound. Its appearance at Farnborough is essentially to drum up further sponsorship for its work-and the interest it generates can be seen in the queues that form to go aboard "to walk the wards."

Next February, in conjunction with another Virginia charity called Operation Smile, the Flying Hospital is to go on an l8-country tour taking nine weeks, during which it is expected to treat hundreds of people with cleft palates, hair lips and other oral deformations.

By Bob Rodwell