F16 used to airlift hospital equipment???
 

Norwegian fighter jet helps save dying patient | World news | The Guardian

Strange article. It's more than half hour's drive from the hospital to Trondheim airport, which is shared with the airforce, assuming this is where the F16 took off. One would assume that just stuffing the equipment into an air ambulance helicopter, or just any helicopter, would have been faster, even if one accounts for the heli's slower travel speed.

Also, they made no mention of whether they stuffed the doc to operate the equipment into the same external cargo pod, the F16 being single crew.

I read a different translation of this article and this one was a bit more precise in detailing the cargo: the box contained spare parts for the heart-lung machine that was already present in the hospital. The hospital in Bodø was properly equipped and had the staff to carry out the procedure but the heart-lung machine needed some spares, that's all.

If the destination was bodø then the airport at that end of the trip is literally next to the town, about a ten minute stroll on foot.

I find shared military/civilian airports fascinating - last time I was in bodø, watching out of the window from departures you see F16s taking off and landing on the same tarmac in between commercial flights.

Gib
 

Not so different to Gib in the older, busier days. Best airport in the world - check in, walk back into town, walk back when you hear the plane land...

This is not that irregular...... in Op Granby in Dec 90 ish - we got into a sticky situation and needed a shovel... asked our American friends if we could borrow one from them.... they didn't have one and we improvised...... 20 hrs later...... Sir, you requested a shovel....

They had only gone and flown a single shovel from the USA tanked a F-16 all the way... As a logistics exercise to test their own abilities..... Bonkers but good training all the same... I think they were more hacked off that we were not that impressed...... took the shovel said thanks and turned away... still makes me chuckle!

Jetscream - wait......what?

The air ambulance did fly the package from the hospital pad in Trondheim to Ørland/ENOL where the F-16 was waiting. (A 15 min hop in the EC135)
Even with transfer time I guess it took less than an hour door to door.

Trondheim-Bodø in the EC135 is around 2 hrs, DCT.

RAF did something similar I believe moving a donor heart from Laarbruch to Newcastle with the the box in the mav's lap in a small box, in the back of a Tornado.