At the risk of adding fuel to certain people's fire, the Scottish Ambulance service have 2 King Air 'ambulance aircraft' that can ferry patients around (I've worked with one of them). See
http://www.scottishambulance.com/hel...ed/airwing.asp for details.
Whether they could have been used is irrelevant however - we had the capability, and evidently the airframe available, so the job was done. Personally, I think this should be seen as a P.R. coup, and used as such - it certainly looks better than 9 hawks spewing a load of smoke out all over the sky... (no offence intended)