Live organ transport
 

What are the rules for transporting live organs on a non-commercial flight by pilots holding a private pilot license? Our club in India has three aircraft, a C172S, a DA 40 and a DA 42. We have been corresponding with the DGCA for several months now to allow us to transport organs free of charge. We have offered to bear all the expenses, including fuel, landing charges, navigation, etc. we would like to know the regulations in other countries for comparison.

Now that is one of the most unexpected questions I've ever seen here!

I hope you get some answers, in the meantime, what are the rules in India?

Don't know if it's the same in India, but if you're doing it privately in the UK based on no revenue earning of any sort, the only rules would be laid down by the senders and receivers of the organs who would need to ensure that the organs get to the recipient safely and in the shortest time as some organs have a time limit on their use.
Factors to take into consideration would be things like is the destination going to be open when you arrive and is it an airport which accepts your type of aircraft; does the pilot have the necessary qualification to make an instrument approach if necessary.
A company at Fairoaks does this type of operation commercially and uses a Kingair, often operating between midnight and 6am, but there are other companies in the UK which use single engined aircraft.

Wouldn't that be a joke. "You can't receive your new heart because some bureaucrat has declared that this 1km strip of tarmac magically becomes forbidden to land on after 6pm".

Not sure which countries you are referring to ChickenHouse, but not true in the Western World.

A lot of human tissue is transported on commercial flights with a volunteer courier. The Charity or organisation overseeing it provides a simple letter but no real permits or licenses.

Kidneys have a shorter sell by date and are usually coordinated via National Transplantation Systems that liase with each other to ensure the best recipient tissue typing. They then use a number of turboprops and jets which may be little more than a one aircraft operation, although not infrequently they charter in the aircraft. They dont use private pilots simply because they need reliability

Hearts and lungs need to be moved quickly and a surgical team normally goes from the recipient hospital to harvest the organs. They charter an aircraft for longer distances, and use road vehicles for shorter distances. The aircraft are again from a private organisation that is known to be able to deliver and big enough to move a team of perhaps four.

So if a small aircraft is needed it will be for an organ where the overall health cost of the transplant procedure means the aircraft cost is relatively insignificant. Although there is nothing stopping the use of some PPL in a 152, I cant really see the advantage. Certainly a surgical team wont agree to that sort of arrangement!

I remember landing at Brum at three in the morning (i was clocking up night hours), it was minus ten degrees (later report said it dropped to -13) and the aircraft that pulled up alongside was an Aztec. Pilot said he had a human heart aboard destined for Edinburgh.

Well, assuming he was solo, hopefully there were two human hearts aboard, destined for Edinburgh...

I'll get my coat! :)

This report from 1979 came to mind - it was an organ transport flight....

https://assets.publishing.service.go...980_G-BFKO.pdf

Still is. Reminds me of a transplant surgeon many years ago who used to get his wife to pick up a kidney at the butchers on Saturdays with the Sunday roast. Kept it in his car in a UK transplant box so when stopped for speeding or other infringements he could wave the box at the policeman and shout 'emergency...transplant'. He told me it always worked as no policeman could tell the difference between a human and a pig's kidney. Wonder they didn't ask why no ice......

I can see that working... Bit of a breach of trust though. If caught, he might lose his job as well as getting fined?

It's a really interesting question. Obviously legal aspects will vary by location. In the UK we have volunteer motorcyclists who transport blood products - not sure if they're allowed to break the speed limit as a reward and I don't know any of the details about who owns the bikes and associated equipment - I suspect they're not privately owned as they have specific markings.

My question would be about the practicalities rather than the legalities. I have not got the reference any more, but I have seen a career fatality rate 1/8 for US medical pilots (I think this included both helimed - which didn't surprise me - and medical transfer - which did). It can be hard enough to say 'no' to flying in bad weather as a commercial pilot to start off with. When doing so is likely to lead to the death of a patient it becomes very hard indeed and I have read a number of accident reports where pilots weighed a fairly high risk of killing themselves against the near certainty of killing a patient, and lost.

Next comes the 'time to spare, go by air' issue that flying is often not particularly quick. If you have a slick system for getting the pilot and aircraft ready whilst the donor organ is being removed, and also for transporting the organ from the destination airport to the destination hospital, I can see that this might not be insurmountable. However in the UK one is often limited by the weather. Perhaps this is less of an issue in your region of India, but I suspect that one might get a much better dispatch rate by using professional pilots and more capable aircraft. The problem being that such services become more dangerous and less economically viable if the 'easy' trips are taken from them by amateurs. I realise that India is a developing nation, but from what I've heard from my colleagues medical wages and costs are going up to the extent that doctors are returning to India from the UK because they can make more money there. In such a climate, I feel it should be expected that pilots and medical transfer services should be paid a fair sum for their efforts.

Fast forward 15 years and I think organ transfers will be accomplished by unmanned drones.

You've probably gathered that I don't immediately like the idea, but obviously you know the logistics of what you're proposing better than I do. Still, food for thought.

Blood is already being routinely delivered by drone in several African countries. These are fixed-wing drones with a range of nearly 200Km and a payload of 5Kg. So I a sure you are right.

Please don't give Amazon any more ideas.. " Hey Gran, your orders arrived 🤣😂"

In the UK, the NHS requires muti-engine aircraft (fixed or rotary) for organ transfers. Being a live organ, the requirements are effectively the same as if you are carrying human passengers rather than cargo...!

The big difference here is that blood is replaceable - apart from a few rare blood groups you just take another armful. Organs are much scarcer. Eventually I'm sure drones will become reliable enough for the purpose though.

True. Although in these circumstances prompt delivery by drone makes the difference between life and death. But they are so far 'perfectly' reliable. After many 1,000s of deliveries, last time I asked, not a single vehicle had been lost or delivery failed.

Hoho. Maybe not as crazy as you might think. The payload is dropped by parachute and routinely hits within a couple of meters of the target. So we are kind of moving in that direction - already working on dropping vaccines in pre-loaded syringes! Maybe not a huge step to make them MIRVs!