Air Ambulance Flying

[Veeneee]

Hey Guys. I'm just new to this place, anyone have any pointers on getting into Air Ambulance work?? Which places are the best?? I've heard there may ba an operator in Hamilton. Who are the people to talk to??? Are they OK to work for?? Are there any others to consider? THANKS!!! VNE

[Luke SkyToddler]

If you're after central north island operators then new plymouth, hamilton and hastings are your boys and they all operate PA31s, so that would be a very useful type rating to have if you wanted to crack the ambulance market, hint hint

Couple of other words of advice before you fire off those cvs though ... have a think about what you want from aviation, if you have a wife or a family then you better make sure she understands all the implications of it, and don't even bother pursuing it if you are at all interested in a 'normal' 9-5 flying job or some sort of a family life.

Contrary to popular belief that the job is on some way glamourous, the day to day grind of the task basically consists of crap like getting called out from a deep sleep into the teeth of some august blizzard at 0230 am to fly a circling approach to minima up some high sided valley in the pissing rain to a hick east coast airport like wairoa, to retrieve some 600 lb hairy monster of a gang prospect who's not been taking his psych medication and just had living kicked out of him in the pub. If you don't have a certain kind of mental attitude and if you aren't totally on top of your game in that environment then you are going to have a very short and sweet life expectancy. If it's just multi-hours-for-airlines you're after then there are a LOT of easier ways to get them.

Oh yeah, and have a long hard think about how you are going to react the first time you are faced with some scenario like transferring some critically injured toddler to wellington burns unit after he's just fallen into the guy fawke's bonfire. I consider myself to be a normal, hard-bastard, non-emotionally affected kind of a kiwi bloke but it really affects you in ways that you wouldn't have expected, when you can see, and hear, and smell, a baby suffering in incredible pain before your very eyes. God they smell awful, like a pork chop or something, but you know they're alive, and they are crying the most heart renderingly awful sounds you've ever heard and you've got to listen to it all the way from Gisborne to Wellington. Stuff like that - particularly when kids were involved - is probably my most abiding memories of my air ambulance days, and I can tell you they aint going to fade in a hurry.

Hours wise, I can't say for sure because we apparently have some 'pilot shortage' going on back in NZ these days but back a couple of years ago when I was doing it, it was pretty much 1000 TT-with-some-multi as a minimum insurance requirement for a hot ship like a chieftain ... and if you come from the Hamilton area and have those kind of hours then I presume you're already on the way to Eagle

Good luck ...

[Veeneee]

Thanks for your advice Mr Toddler,
You say it affects your family life souldn't flght and duty limitations keep this to a minimum, you must get some time off?? With anywhere any time kinda flying at least they must have high standards eg: equipment( de ice gear, gps etc..) & Training. So are the guys doing these jobs moving on if eagle are employing at the moment??

Thanks VNE

[always inverted]

Flight and Duty times can be broken to my understanding if it is a medical emergency, please correct me if I'm wrong tho. But I think that you will find that very few of the a/c concerned will have a full de-ice system. You may be lucky and get props only. Also the equipment in the planes will be like most other a/c in charter, no hsi, rmi, wx radar etc. Most should have a gps, and if your lucky it will be tso'd.

[Luke SkyToddler]

The planes that I flew on the serious ambulance callouts were pretty well set up with GPS, radar, radalt, HSI/RMI, deicing that works, decent autopilot etc etc. All right we also had a battered old Seneca that we used to use for training and fair-weather, low priority hospital transfers, and in dire emergencies when another plane was tech, but on the whole the aircraft had a lot better gear in them than the commuter-airliner I fly now.

Yes veenee you do get time off but a lot of your work is done out of hours. You typically carry a pager 3 or 4 24-hour-periods a week but you do work all those hours, and it's just nature that the pager goes off when you're just busy cooking dinner, or putting the kids to bed, or catching up with your long lost mate who's dropped by, or proposing to your girlfriend or whatever. You obviously can't have a beer with your dinner or anything like that, you have to live within 5-10 mins of the airport (or sleep in the crew room on your on-call nights), and no matter how much you can't be arsed to, you can't EVER make up some excuse not to go.

I can't cover all the variables here because all organizations are different, but the only point i was trying to make is that it is definitely a lot harder on relationships / normal family life than, say, instructing or air taxi or whatever.

FTL schemes don't really apply I'm afraid, it's considered to be aerial work rather than air transport. If you've come on duty in the morning, done 5 consecutive hospital callouts and didn't get home til 2am and you are absolutely shattered, yeah you might for example leave a message on the office answerphone that you won't be reporting to the office until 2 pm the next afternoon, but you are still on call for the rest of that 24 hour period (and if you're on call for the next day as well, well tough s h i t).

You can still be on call for multiple consecutive 24-hour periods and you basically have to fly everything that comes up in that period. Yes of course the ops manual will state somewhere in it that you have the on-paper right to refuse to fly if you consider yourself to be so knackered as to be dangerous, in which case you call in the standby guy.

In practice the standby guy is normally the boss, and then he gives you a big talking to over the phone about how he's busy, and how he did twice as many hours as you when he was a young fella, and if you stand your ground he chucks a big wobbly and threatens you with the sack if you don't harden up and go flying

[Tinstaafl]

Duty & standby times are *very* subject to the rules & regs of the particular country. Our FTL scheme in the UK wasn't too bad.


Could still be fatiguing though: The a/c had no radar, no GPS. Just the standard VOR (2), ADF (2) , DME (1) & autopilot. This for often low level night flight into no-radar/no navaid islands in the North Sea. At least they had de-icing & a HSI & 1 RMI.

[swh]

Veeneee,

In Oz most of the work is turbine, need to have a good mixed bag of experience, and generally be a consistantly good operator.

Dont know what they are pushing in NZ, but here if things are not safe, dont do it, that goes for F&D, Wx, Aircraft, Loads, Fuel etc.

[Split Flap]

Flight and Duty Times!!!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah......

Oh no really....

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaahah

Oh stop it your making me cry....

Hahhahahahahahaha

Scince WHEN has ANY NZGA operator ever been worried about flight and duty times! They are just something that has to be made up when CAA arrives.

[swh]

Split Flap,

I find that difficult to believe, every operator has a duty of care to their employees and customers, if an accident were to occur the operator would be fully liable.

I know some pilots who have done 19 hr days this year for aeromedical work, that was not legal under the F&D, and the pilot had the final say if he/she would fly past their legal maximum on a MED 1 mercy flight. Not saying they were happy with the idea, but at the end of the day it was their call.

It would be extremely short sighted for an operator to put their reputation, assets both material and human at risk, for which simple risk management will prevent.

[splatgothebugs]

Luke, split

I agree with you, I didn't do any med stuff myself but know plenty of chaps and chappeses that did/do. Not as glam as it seemed on the face.

Duty times seem to mean nothing and you are always on call (but thats Kiwi GA). In saying that though at least you get a half livable salary and the aircraft are generally in good nik.

Veeneee

The operators in Hamilton are run out of Taupo, other places to go see would be Air Gissy and an outfit in hastings (sorry can't remember the name).

Best of luck in your searches.

splat

[Luke SkyToddler]

That would be Air Hawke's Bay, splat, although it's a hard nut to crack as an outsider because it's all part of the Air Academy Hastings / Hawke's Bay Aero Club family, and it's normally their instructors who get first crack of the whip when it comes to the multi flying.

Just remembered there's also an outfit in Fielding, Air Manawatu I think? Navajo / Chieftain once again.

Also at the risk of stating the obvious, they've got the Metro's in Auckland and Wellington, but I think you've got to buy a type rating off Airwork and stand in the queue for that one.

[Jamair]

Inverted & Co:

MED 1 is NOT an exemption from F&D or any other Regs; only a Mercy Flighty can be, and they are as rare as rocking horse poo (despite what the media keep sprouting) due to the paper blizzard that follows a Mercy Flight declaration. I cannot recall the last time I heard a Mercy Flight being declared.

MED 1 gives a medical flight priority in routing and minimum holdups in terminal areas, THAT'S ALL. A MED 2 does much the same, with less priority in competition with say, POL 1, MED 1 etc.

The ATSB report into the Capricorn Rescue crash at Malborough should give all Aeromed operators pause. Outside a Mercy Flight declaration, Aeromed has NO special exemptions, nor should it. The same criteria in F&D, W&B, Wx & Altn etc still apply.

Maybe things are different in a regulatory sense over the Tasman - but I doubt it.

[Motor Plane Driver]

I was wondering where you find the definition of MED 1 and 2.

Cheers

[swh]

Motor Plane Driver

For civilian medical flights, Australia has adopted the following flight categories for the purpose of defining the priority which ATC must give to such flights in airspace or at aerodromes having high traffic movements – MERCY flights; MED 1 flights; MED 2 flights; HOSPITAL flights.

A flight providing transport of medical patients, personnel, and/or equipment, prioritised as:

• MED 1: An aircraft proceeding to pick up, or carrying , a severely ill patient, or one on whom life support measures are being taken.
• MED 2: An aircraft proceeding to pick up medical personnel and/or equipment urgently required for the transport of a MED 1 patient, or returning urgently required medical personnel and/or equipment at the termination of a MED 1 flight.

Jamair : Mercy flights happen all the time, the paperwork that follows is not over the top, its there to ensure that those provisions are only used when required.

[maxgrad]

Declaring a mercy flight soas to exceed F&D times is a relatively gutsy move.
If you have your paperwork and authorising people sorted eg (Doctor), OK but you wouldn't want to make a hobbit of it.

[Jamair]

swh:

Mayhap you're right about the frequency of mercy flight declarations, but I cannot recall the last time I heard of one and I'm in the aeromed game.

The criteria are quite proscriptive and any serious operator would likely have much better alternatives for such mundane issues as F&Ds et al - like standby crews. The reality of aeromed is that it is seldom if ever truely 'life saving'; so it is seldom or never that aeromed needs to be in a 'mercy flight' situation.

Can't make any definitive statements on the subject in any area but mine; this is only what I see from my small perch in a big country.

Cheers.

[gadgetguru]

guts versus glory

Veeneee

i found this perusing the net, i too had & sometimes still consider EMS flying as a goal to aspire too, but i honestly don't know how i'd handle the human aspect, I'm x-mil & have seen my fair share of things, & am no nancy, but i have children now, i am maturing gracefully & seem to (occasionally) succum to emotions that never affected me previously in the days of the green beret.

i hope you might find some insight from this as i did:

Being an Emergency Medical Service Helicopter Pilot
by Daniel E Tyler, NRMA-CareFlight, Sydney
I am often asked, "What's it like as a medivac pilot? Gee, you must have the best job around." "But you must see some really terrible things," others have said to me.
I usually say something like, "Oh, it's pretty boring, really." "Just like any job." And it can be, too. But sometimes it's not. .....

to continue on, download the PDF from

http://www.careflight.org/client_images/8413.pdf

cheers

[maxgrad]

gadgetguru

Medical flying is well worth it
I have kids too so know where you are coming from.
Although the pilot is an intergral part of the medical team he/she filters out what is not req or a priority soas to do his part, ie fly the a/c

[Richo]

AEROMED in the NT

Hello all

While I know nothing of the conditions and work in NZ, I will offer the following for MED flying in general.

After 4 years of twin turbine AEROMED flying in the NT, I never had to declare a mercy flight, though I did come close once due to no ground lighting and the use of cars. In our company, mercy flights were considered to be very last option and then only with the approval of the CP or deputy.

Don't expect to do a lot of flying, we did approx 400 hours a year including checks, and that was a at a busy base. The average flight is approx. 1 to 2 hours. But you can expect to go at any time of the day or night, sometimes several flights per duty. Frankly flying SP IFR at night into dirt strips with solar PAL or flares, in the NT is very high workload. Do that in the middle of the wet season and you are looking at some of the most demanding/fatuging/Interesting flying you will ever do.

It was impresed upon me very early by the SENIOR guys that you are the pilot doing your job to, and by the rules. There is never any circumstance in aeromed flying (MED1 or the such) where you RISK yourself or the medical crew. If anything you become quite conservative and work at an unhurried pace.

In that four years I remember turning down two flight due to WX (no alternate available) turning back on one occasion due TS over the dirt strip and sevaral wait for the next crews due to duty times. Having said that I have heard of a 19 hour duty and done several 14 hour tours myself, all with the blessing of ops and senior crew.

The moral of all aeromed flying " You are the Taxi/Ambulance service, NOT the RESCUE/First aid service, don,t become the next victim"

Great job if you can get one.
Richo

[gadgetguru]

Hi Max

don't get me wrong, I hold the position & the role of the crew in very high regard

I grew up near & around the NSCA & aspired to join its ranks in my heady youth. Were it still around, my life might have been a very different path

now that i think things through (a little bit anyway), i can see the downside. I can see the up too, the job satisfaction for success is instantaneous or it may also drag out until you hear back from the Hospital, but the failure (not necessarily on your part) is / can be also instant.

I would like to think that i am/would be up to the challenge one day, but as a mere student pilot, i am an eternity away from being anywhere near eligible to even apply for such a lofy position, quite simply 'I know not of where i speak' (yet), maybe someday, I will , & i might be able to include myself in this very special category of human beings

but i doubt this thread will be around to see the day.