You’d be surprised to find out the number of people who seek the help of Medical Air transportation. It might be an urgent situation, for which they’ll have to go for a helicopter extraction, or a fixed-wing transfer, for a patient that that it’s ill or injured and has to be moved someplace else to receive better care. Medical air transport services should always be available and ready for you.

Do you know your choices?

Most people will never need an air ambulance. So many people don’t even know their choices, if something happens. You might need an helicopter, or a propeller plane. How about flying: doing it commercially really seems like a good idea, as we think. Perhaps a medically configured jet aircraft might be needed instead.

So what are the types of medical air transport?

There are many terms that describe the service, from medical flights to air ambulance, to Medical Air Transportation. The companies that offer care to patients and the hospitals have one thing in common – their goal to move a patient quickly from one place to another.

Medical air transportation is used in critically urgent situations. The transport crew will have to answer the call quickly to move the patient as fast as possible. Sometimes it might involve getting into difficult locations, such as a rooftop, hiking areas, or a roadway.

Fixed wing medical comes with very different transport. By that time, the patient is stabilized and is being transported to an appropriate level of care, for example, from a hospital to a Level 1 or 2 trauma center, or one that specializes in rehabilitation, even a return home. For this one, airplanes are designed as “flying ICUs,” and have lots of equipment, including a Life Port Plus System, onboard oxygen, a ventilator, heart monitor and pretty much everything that’s needed for medical care. The reputable companies also have critical care nurses and critical care paramedics on board, and they all have extensive training in giving the best care to patients which are in transit.

After the decision was made (medical air transport is better suited to a fixed-wing aircraft), people still need to make another choice: jet aircraft or propeller plane.

If we’re talking about rural areas, that have small runways, then the choice is already made: propeller based planes are smaller and don’t require the length of the runway of a jet aircraft. It’s true, the range and air speed of these planes are small, but they might be just perfect for some particular patients and their conditions.

For fixed wing jet aircraft, the medical air transport has altitude flexibility, as the planes fly as high as 45,000 feet in order to avoid unsafe turbulence and the weather which sometimes just doesn’t team with us.