Your Helicopter

Aircraft Facts

• The Essex Air Ambulance is a state of the art MD902 Explorer.
• The helicopter is powered by 2 Pratt and Whitney 206E engines. It also has full single engine capability allowing it to fly and land with one engine if necessary.
• Flies at around 150 miles per hour (138 knots) - cruising speed in still air.
• The helicopter is able to reach the farthest point in Essex in approx 15 minutes.
• The maximum flying time to the nearest hospital from anywhere is Essex is 8 minutes.  Saving vital time when conveying emergency patients.
• The helicopter carries full life-support medical equipment and drugs and is able to carry up to 2 patients at any one time – one on a stretcher and one sitting.
• Normal flight crew is a pilot, paramedic and a doctor of at least registrar qualification enabling vital pre hospital skills and techniques to be brought to a patient at a scene enabling life saving procedures to start at the earliest opportunity.
• Normal flight height is around 1,000 feet but the helicopter may fly as low as 500 feet on a mission.
• Stretcher patients are placed in the helicopter via the rear cabin port door.
• The aircraft has space to carry a patient’s relative if necessary (particularly important if the patient is a child).
• The Essex Air Ambulance swiftly bypasses land congestion to reach even the most inaccessible areas such as golf courses, farmland, bridle-paths and woodland.
• In record time clinicians and life-saving support equipment can be rushed to the scene of an incident.  The patient can then be taken back to an appropriate hospital within minutes.

Medical Facts

• Essex and Herts Air Ambulance Trust works with East of England Ambulance Service Trust to develop and provide health care for the critically ill and injured in the County.
• The Charity has recently improved its Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) with the introduction of specially trained Doctors and Flight Paramedics.
• The HEMS team can bring hospital quality care to the scene of an incident and take patients to specialist hospitals that can provide the most appropriate medical and surgical help, which may be further away than the nearest hospital to the incident. Ultimately this reduces the time to it takes to give a patient the most appropriate care and reducing the need to transfer them further.
• The team carries out some emergency surgical procedures and is able to administer medication for people with severe injuries.
• A general anesthetic can be administered to very sick patients at the scene.
• The team ensures best practice and the Charity is a founder member of UK Hems.
• Tasking this resource to patients where it can make a difference is vital and medical information from scene is essential. The East of England Ambulance Service Trust’s dispatchers in the ambulance control rooms are a vital link in the service.
• The team debriefs after all calls and all cases are reviewed by Consultants in Accident and Emergency.
• The team also rehearses emergency drills regularly and conducts a monthly governance day where review cases and procedures are reviewed.