Every statement from them should be taken with a grain of salt
There’s that ‘anti-RFDS’ tone sneaking in again.
Myself and another Hedland pilot flew to Kununurra for this job. Derby unavailable for some reason. Kununurra Hospital were completely overwhelmed, as you could imagine. Our medical crews went in to stabilise for transfer. I flew Turia Pitt on to Darwin. We chose Darwin for a number of reasons.
1. Doctors were struggling to gain IV access for fluid resus. Therefore time critical.
2. Pilots would have to declare mercy flight to get to Perth due to duty time restrictions.
3. Perth would require two fuel stops due to load limits with the PC12.
4. Darwin was only 45 minutes away
5. Darwin had a good trauma unit with experienced medical staff, thanks to the Bali bombings.
Although this scenario isn’t exactly an everyday event, a PC24 based in Broome would have been ideal. I don’t recall us having much ‘lead time’ for this job, so the Jet transit time from Jandakot would have been an issue.