No Charter A/C available then.....
 

"A baby being treated in Swansea which needed specialist neo-natal care has been flown for treatment from south Wales to Scotland by the RAF.
An RAF Hercules touched down at Cardiff airport carrying a medical team from Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow.
The hospital is one of four in the UK with a heart-and-lung incubator.
A spokesperson for Swansea NHS Trust said: "A baby's life is always valuable and all the stops were pulled to make sure this one makes it."
The four-engined aircraft, used to ferry troops and equipment to forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, landed with a specialist incubator for the sick child.
The mission was to move the baby from Singleton Hospital in Swansea to the Glasgow children's unit and the heart-and-lung bypass equipment.
Airport passengers saw the ambulance arrive and the baby taken on board the Hercules.
Journey
An onlooker at the airport said: "I've never seen an RAF aeroplane land on a civilian runway.
"It was quite a shock. Then an ambulance pulled up and paramedics jumped in with what looked like a special incubator.
"It caused quite a stir in the departure lounge. That baby must be in serious trouble to merit this kind of attention."
An RAF spokesman said: "It was an unusual mission to fly a medical team on this type of operation.
"We quite often fly patients to hospitals but in this case it was decided it was more suitable to bring the team from the children's hospital in Glasgow to Cardiff airport."
The Hercules left RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire to fly to Glasgow where the team and equipment were flown on the 90-minute journey to Cardiff.
Huw Williams, Swansea NHS Trust Divisional General Manager for Women and Children's Services, said: "There are only four ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machines in the UK, three in England and one in Scotland. There isn't one in Wales.
"The three English ECMO machines were not available so a decision was taken to fly the baby to Scotland."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6089572.stm

:ugh: :ugh:

Bet the crew needed special training for that. Those RAF runways are completely different. Look at the problems they had at Robin Hood Intl - the civvy pilots took ages to get the hang of using former RAF runways.

and will the costs lie where they fall?

Interesting Ad under my details just now.........


Oops it's gone now.... Was advertising Air Ambulance outfits...

WNM

Your title suggests disapproval? After 'utterlty, utterlygate', the positive press won't harm the RAF, though I doubt that the persons doing the auth'ing were quite that cynical.

As for pressure on crews/overstretch etc, I don't believe any of them felt put upon in transferring a baby to a specialist unit.

Pontius: isn't the whole shooting match already paid for? By me and one or two others, through taxes.

CG

who's clearly missing something here.

Budgets CG, budgets.

In the pre-budget holding days you could safely go for the old 'all paid for by taxes' line, therefore no bills for payment/services provided even when it was unexpected or short notice tasking. Nowadays as HMF are only (under) budgeted to perform certain tasks anything outside that must be paid for by the tasker.

Unfortunately, in a move that could only have been inspired by accountants, government agencies pay the admin costs to shuffle around virtual money that eventually comes out of the same financial pot anyway

That's my understanding anyway

i'm just wondering why they didn't land at swansea airport, singleton hospital is that side of town, so it would have been a 4 or 5 mile ambulance journey instead of a 60 mile journey.

This is a good news story, right?

Or am I missing something. We used a 'STATE' asset to save a baby's life - well done RAF for a job nicely done. And to land at a Civvy airfield to remind them that this is what the services who risks their lives for you abroad actually look like!

So what! for the costs this is good PR and saving lives, more I say!:D

CG

Disapproval????….of the transporting a seriously sick child…… Don’t think so and I resent your inference.
A seriously sick child should have all the stops pulled out for it.


WRT the crew, who mentioned ‘any of them felt put upon’??


But as you elude to it, yes, after all the recent comment on here about overstretch of the AT world etc …. I would have thought an Air Ambulance or Charter would have been more appropriate, maybe even quicker than a C130. I find it hard to believe that there is no capacity in the civilian world for such flights.


who's clearly missing something here???

In the bigger scheme of things the cost of flying from Scotland to Swansea in a Hercules isn't even on the richter scale compared to the cost or our military operations in the east!

Are we turning into a bunch of cynics? A crew is sent on a mercy mission in order to save a baby and this generates cries of "Who is picking up the bill" "Couldn't someone else have been used"etc. Call me out for this sort of task, at oh christ almighty am, even if not on standby, and I'll be there and worry about the admin later.

Might it have been a Hercules because it is easier to load equipment over the ramp? Might it have been because the Hercules has various power outlets, including an iron lung outlet?

Let's just be thankful that the job was done.

And another fish is hauled out of the sea.

Cynic is the true word.

As Maple 1 says During Op Fresco the ODPM was billed for everything from CD Players, kettles, toasters, to subsistence and accommodation.

The Execs are keen to outload as much of any additional costs from the Defence budget and onto another department as possible. It is not entirely new. In the kipper fleet, if we had the odd half-hour, we used to log fisheries or oil rig surveillance aand bill the Dept for Energy (or whatever) and MAFF.

Long gone are the days when we could do a favour for 'free' now someone is there with apen and paper to write out an invoice.

A big well done to all involved. In the past I've been involved in the generation of a frame to do something similar, and can say I didn't mind the extra work one bit.

Lyneham to Glasgow to Swansea to Lyneham?

Sounds like a useful MCT trip - just add a few minutes for the onload/offload of the medical team.... Probably all achieved within the available training budget, but more importantly it achieved a lot more than endless NDB holds over Wooty B.

Not in the same league, but even on the old FunBus we occasionally managed to do things on training trips which wouldn't have been possible otherwise - such as an airways training trip for a brace of co-piglets to Paderborn and back to drop off a medical team, for example. Much better value than droning round a triangular route and back to Brize to do the pilot change - because for once we did something useful!

Take it out of B liars paycheck, or even better, take it out of Pontious Prezza's, at least they would have something tangible to apportion their extra allowances to...

And the problem is???? ..... A BIG Well done to all involved... :ok:

The only problem I can see is the reason for the flight in the first place.... why ise'nt there a Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Machine in Wales? or arent they important enough to our great leader and his outstanding Health Service Minister......

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)

OTOH I do not recall seeing anything on MOD Net

King Air cant carry a full ECMO team or the DAC that they use.

No loss costs are recovered from the Health Authority requesting the transfer.

A job well done Albert:)


Always a Sapper - You are absolutely correct.........................................the Welsh are not important.