Air ambulance busier than ever

The last six months has been the busiest ever for Northland’s air ambulance service NEST, with the emergency services team responding to 405 requests for assistance from 1 January to 30 June this year.

This is up from 389 call outs over the same period last year, and from approximately 300 from five years ago, says chief pilot and CEO Peter Turnbull.

Although only half way through the year, the air ambulance service is on track to top last year’s flight record of 800 missions and more than 1100 flight hours responding to requests for assistance. “We expect our workload to continue to increase throughout the year.”

“Our team of pilots and St John paramedics are working around the clock to provide a dedicated air ambulance service to Northland. Our on call team is up in the air approximately three hours per day, not including the time spent on the ground with each patient.”

January was the busiest month to date, with the team responding to up to eight call outs per day and clocking a total of 104.4 hours in flight. The 84 call outs included a near drowning, a dog attack, four multi-system traumas and four strokes.

April wasn’t far behind, with the helicopters in the air up to five times a day and spending an average of 3.5 hours in flight per day.

“Transporting a patient with a suspected case of Ebola from Gore to Christchurch was our longest flight this year – a job that took our specialist emergency team more than six hours to complete.

“The second longest flight was transferring a patient from Gisborne to North Shore Hospital, which took us 4.2 hours from start to finish.”

NEST’s Sikorsky S-76’s are the longest range helicopters in the country, carrying enough fuel to last more than 5 hours in the air when accompanied with an extra fuel tank. This means they are fully equipped for long distance missions.

In the busier months, the NEST helicopters can be called upon anywhere between 1-8 times a day. Having three Sikorsky helicopters in rotation means NEST can deploy a number of teams at the same time, if need be.

~ENDS~

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