B.C. to fly fleet of ‘state-of-the-art’ air ambulances
Posted June 7, 2024 1:10 pm.
Last Updated June 10, 2024 11:05 am.
The B.C. government has announced a new fleet of air ambulance planes to fly medical emergency patients across the province.
According to a release, BC Emergency Health Services is replacing its existing fleet of emergency planes with 12 new “state-of-the-art” Beechcraft King Air 360CHW air ambulances.
“Air ambulances allow patients to be treated by highly trained paramedics while they are being transported. These airplanes are the fastest way to travel to a health-care facility, especially for patients in hard-to-reach areas. These aircraft are used both in emergency medical response and to transfer patients between health-care facilities,” said the province.
At a press event Friday, Premier David Eby said one of the new planes went into service at the beginning of the month, and eight more will be in service by the fall of 2025, with three secured as backup.
“When someone you love is critically ill or injured, they deserve the best and fastest care possible,” said Eby.
He added that the new aircraft will reportedly have several features that the previous planes did not.
“Stretchers can be loaded in and out of the planes without having to transfer stations. The new planes can land on gravel runways, opening up entirely new parts of the province to air ambulance service. The entire fleet will have a consistent interior design, which is state of the art, making it easier for air paramedics to support patients,” said Eby.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the new layout will make patient transfers from land to plane much more seamless and “eliminate disturbing patients for stretcher-to-stretcher moves.”
Critical care flight paramedic Chris Singh says getting patients where they need to be is critical in what they do.
“The challenges that small communities have always faced is we don’t have the resources to spread out for specialized hospital treatments, CT scanners, Cath labs,” Singh said.
“Right now, we manually carry the stretcher, six people take the stretcher by hand into the plane. So now, the patient stays on the stretcher that they started on. They get to stay comfortable. From a paramedic safety perspective, the ability to load a patient with basically one hand greatly improves our safety profile.”
Eby said the air ambulances will remain parked at their current locations, with three airplanes in Vancouver, three in Kelowna, two in Prince George, and one in Fort St. John.
BC Emergency Health Services says it completed 8,290 patient transports involving air resources throughout the province last year — approximately 70 per cent of those calls employ airplanes, as opposed to helicopters.
The province said the new fleet was made possible by an investment of $673 million over 10 years.
With files from Cecilia Hua.
