A better way . . .

The Trust saves hundreds of lives each year and offers aero-medical services that would otherwise not exist in the region. Its story is an incredible one, begun by one determined man and continued today by a whole community.

The History

The Wahine disaster made an indelible impression on Peter Button, planting the seed for an air rescue service in Wellington. In 1975, with financial help from Wellington businessman Mark Dunajtschik, he bought a Hughes 300 helicopter — then set out to get his helicopter pilot’s licence and founded Capital Helicopters.

Wellington neurosurgeon Russell Worth, who had treated patients flown from offshore oilrigs in the UK, became close friends with Peter. Together they worked on establishing their air rescue service, gaining an air operating licence in 1976.

In 1977 Capital Helicopters upgraded to a modern Bell Jet Ranger 206B, which became the first civilian air ambulance helicopter in New Zealand, equipped with an extensive suite of search and rescue equipment such as a winch, liferaft, communications equipment and a ‘scoop-net’.

Peter Button’s status as a true Wellington hero was firmly cemented in 1986 when he and his son Clive rescued two policemen from the heavily damaged Police launch that had capsized in a severe storm. He was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Gallantry and his son earned the Queen’s Commendation for Gallantry.

But tragedy struck only a few days after the award ceremony. While on an aerial photography shoot, Peter’s helicopter was diverted by the Police to chase an escaped prisoner. The helicopter struck power lines as it followed the escapee up a riverbed,and Peter Button and two other helicopter occupants were killed.

On 14 February 2005, the Governor General opened the Trust’s Auckland-based air ambulance service, using another Airwork Metroliner III. The Life Flight Trust took over the air ambulance service for the greater Auckland area after the collapse of Child Flight, which previously operated the service.

In April this year the contract for the Wellington Airport-based fixed-wing air ambulance service passed from Airwork to Vincent Aviation, operating a British Aerospace Jetstream J32-EP. The lease deal included maintenance and aircrew and is a perfect arrangement with Vincent Aviation’s hangar next door to Life Flight.

Life Flight now operates three aircraft — the Westpac Rescue Helicopter BK117, which it owns and operates, a Fairchild-Swearingen Metroliner III operated by Airwork, and the new Jetstream J32.

The two fixed-wing aircraft fly over 1 000 patients per year, with the helicopter making baout 300 rescues per year. To date, the Life Flight Trust has helped more than 20,000 patients and has cemented itself as a vital part of the medical services used by the community.

The air ambulances

Bae Jetstream J32-EP (ZK-LFW): the introduction of the Jetstream is a major step forward for the Trust. Operated by Vincent Aviation, it offers many advantages over the Metroliner, not least of which its reduced operating costs — important for a charity.

It’s also bigger and the ability to stand inside the aircraft reduces fatigue for medical staff and makes movement inside the cabin much easier. The Jetstream has an offset aisle, allowing enough room for two stretcher patients and their medical equipment down the right-hand side and four seats for medical crew or relatives down the left.
ZK-LFW is a modified version of a standard J32EP, offering extra backup cockpit displays. Life Flight also has added a new wiring loom to supply power for the medical equipment and some of the seats were switched to face the rear, allowing a doctor and nurse to sit facing each other alongside the patient.

And importantly, extra communications equipment was installed to allow the medical teams to consult specialists on the ground independently of the aircrew’s radio.

One of the Vincent Aviation aircrew flying the Jetstream is Dion McMillan, who has 6,000 hours on light aircraft, 737s and the Jetstream: “We don’t require any special ratings to fly an air ambulance but do receive special training in patient handling,” he explains.

“From a pilot’s point of view we try to make gentle take-offs and landings and avoid turbulence. There are no modifications to the aircraft that can reduce turbulence but we can change speed, track or height to try and minimise the turbulence we encounter.”

The a livery of bandages and safety pins is instantly recognisable as it performs its work around the country. Life Flight’s CEO David Irving says: “The bandage design expresses, at a glance, what Life Flight is all about.”

Fairchild SA227-AC Metroliner III (ZK-NSS): the first Metroliner design flew in 1972 and has seen extensive military and civilian use around the world, with over 300 still in use.

The Metroliner is an evolution of the original Swearingen Merlin turboprop-powered business aircraft, it gained a reputation as an unforgiving yet highly capable machine with a high cruise speed of 515km/h, a long range of over 1,000km and a usable payload. Like the Jetstream, it’s capable of keeping internal pressurisation at sea level up to 15,000ft, very important for air ambulance duties.

It has space for two stretcher patients and associated medical equipment as well as up to nine medical or support staff. The Metroliner shares the same Garrett engines as the Jetstream but the fuselage is longer, with a smaller cross-section.

Life Flight’s Westpac rescue helicopter

Kawasaki BK117-D2 (ZK-HLF): the MBB/Kawasaki BK117 is recognised the world over as one of the best helicopters for rescue work. A combined design and production effort between Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm and Kawasaki and now incorporated into the Eurocopter stable, there are many examples operating in New Zealand in a rescue role.

The helicopter is maintained and piloted under a deal with Helilink New Zealand. Harry Stevenson has been flying helicopters in New Zealand for over 20 years and the BK117 since 2005. He finds this helicopter perfect for the work: “Due to its compact size, with a fairly small rotor diameter and a nicely elevated tail rotor, we can land in quite confined areas,” he says.

“The cabin design affords quite a good working space for the paramedics or medical teams and he clamshell doors aft allow really good access for loading and unloading patients. The aircraft is very robust, can handle pretty tough weather conditions and is very versatile for all the different types of operations we perform.”
One of the major alterations was to make its cockpit night-vision goggle compatible, with some instruments being moved to allow them to still be visible to pilots wearing the goggles.

There are also filters over all light sources in the cockpit to decrease the amount of ambient light to which the crew’s exposed. The helicopter can carry forward-looking infra red thermal imaging equipment that is so sensitive the crew can tell whether a house is insulated or not as they fly above. It also can be fitted with a 30 million candlepower Nightsun searchlight.

In 2010 two new Honeywell LTS101B-2 engines, producing 850shp each, were installed in the Westpac Rescue Helicopter, bringing the helicopter up to BK117-D2 standard.

This makes ZK-HLF one of the most capable rescue helicopters in the country. The extra power now available under certain circumstances extends the operational envelope and, most importantly allows it to land on hospital helipads in poor conditions. Flying a Rescue helicopter places a lot of new and challenging demands on a pilot: “Personally, the biggest learning curve was coming to grips with flying at night, and of course learning to fly on the night vision goggles was another skill as well,” Harry says.

“Typically, as a normal commercial pilot there is not much call to be flying at night, apart from frost control ops. I know when I began in 2005 I had fairly minimal night experience, most of which was frost control, which is an entirely different ball game than flying cross-country at night to unknown remote landing sites, or conducting search operations at night in the hills or over water.”

Night cross country ratings and night vision goggle ratings are an absolute necessity for a rescue pilot. He says: “Night operations that are the most difficult and challenging part of the job.

“There are also a lot of avionics and role equipment that you must know thoroughly ranging from beacon tracking gear, search and rescue GPS, operation of search lights and the night sun. The list goes on.”
Communications are an important part of any rescue, whether between the helicopter crew itself or with assets on the ground: “We are a pretty tight knit team and we put a lot of time and effort into cockpit resource management (CRM) training. We all have input, but at the end of the day it’s the pilot that is responsible for the safe conduct of the operation.

“Communications can be an enormous extra workload on some jobs, especially search and rescue jobs. When it gets busy we divide up the workload between pilot and crew. Generally speaking the pilot will communicate on the aviation frequencies and the Life Flight crew will talk to other agencies such as police, fire, coastguard, ambulance, and maritime radio.”

The helicopter can be called on to carry out a wide variety of missions at a moment’s notice. Equipped with advanced equipment for search and rescue and beacon searching, it also can transporting explosive ordinance disposal robots for the police or army.

The BK117 can lift up to 1,000 litres of water and fire retardant foam for firefighting and, of course, carry a wide array of medical equipment for its inter-hospital and neo-natal transfers.

Air Ambulance Operations

One of Life Flight’s specialities is neo-natal transfers, flying about 200 premature babies a year. A doctor and a specially trained flight nurse are carried, along with parents or relatives. This service is exceptionally important, since it allows babies to be transferred to and from Wellington Hospital’s excellent neo-natal intensive care unit.
Specially designed patient stretchers bridges compatible with aircraft and road ambulances carry the oxygen and essential medical equipment that must be kept with the patient at all times. This enables flight nurses and doctors to monitor the patient’s vital signs at any stage of the transfer while also eliminating unnecessary patient movement.
Each bridge has its own power and oxygen supply, a ventilator, cardiac monitor and intravenous pumps and can be stored in the cargo pod underneath the aircraft. As CEO David Irving explains: “Life Flight aircraft have much the same medical equipment that you would find in the intensive care unit of a regional hospital.
“All the medical equipment is interchangeable between the fixed wing aircraft and the helicopter, enabling the seamless transport of patients.”
As soon as Life Flight receives a call, the flight team carries out a number of rapid, simultaneous processes — and has to complete them in minutes or seconds.

These include mission planning, team assembly, pre-flight checks, equipment selection such as medical equipment, night vision goggles, winch gear and air traffic control priority co-ordination.

An attempt is made to contact anybody already on the ground at the location, the best hospital to take the patient to is determined and that hospital is notified. Meanwhile, co-ordination is begun with any other agencies involved.

If the helicopter is dispatched to an emergency, the crew comprises the pilot, a crewman who is also the winch-operator and a qualified basic paramedic and an advanced intensive care paramedic.

On arrival at the scene the paramedic takes charge, assisted by the crewman. The patient is stabilise then transferred onto the medical stretcher and into the helicopter. Treatment continues on the journey to hospital.

If flying into Wellington, they land on the hospital roof helipad and from there patients can be in the emergency department in less than 90 seconds.
Air ambulance services require different specialist medical teams to match each type of mission being flown. The Wellington Free Ambulance paramedics on the team are specially trained in helicopter and rescue operations. The flight doctors and flight nurses who accompany the patients are highly trained specialists.

The entire Life Flight operation is geared around providing an accurate response in as little time as possible. During the day they have an entire crew on base ready to go. The time from a call to the aircraft being airborne usually is no more than seven minutes in the helicopter and one hour in the fixed-wing.

At night, the crew must either sleep on base or live within 10 minutes’ travel — and more preparation time is taken to ensure safe night flying.

But saving lives is also an expensive business. CEO David Irving says: “It costs $10 million a year to run our emergency air services. Fees for certain services to the district health boards and other government agencies contribute approximately $6.5 million, which leaves $3.5 million for the community to raise each year to keep us flying.

“We absolutely rely on support from the community and are very grateful to everyone who contributes to save lives.”