Originally Posted by
evilducky
This probably needs to be stressed too. You'll probably only do a handful of super high stakes retreivals a year where you're involved in outright saving a life, the rest will be low acuity transfers, repat flights or clinics. For the most part you're just making up for the absolute lack of specialist care in WA other than down south, Gero, Hedland and Broome.
Missed your dialysis appointment during the day and now in renal failure, and its a Friday night with no local services until Monday? RFDS to Perth. Non-specific pain in the gut but you're in a super remote community? RFDS to Broome (absconded on arrival).
Don't even dream about a road landing or limited flare path, there are guys who've been there 15 years and have never done either outside of training. Just too many good mining strips around and the medical threshold required to risk a AU$10mil asset on something other than an actual airstrip is very, very high.
During my line training on the PC12NG I had to land at Meekatharra with two vehicles and two portable lights in 600m at night. It was after a 10 hour, four sector duty and the ground crews working on the runway lights had cut the wrong cable. So we had two vehicles at the threshold and two lamps at the far end. Training Captain made me land the buggar. Was fine but you never know what might happen! 😲