“We found the BK 117 to be an economical model for Halo. From a financial aspect and practical purposes, it certainly gives us a lot of room inside the aircraft, allowing space for patient care, search and rescue, hoisting and longline operations. It has sliding doors enabling spotting or just facilitating operations from its side.
“Our activation time is eight minutes. The crew is scrambled, helicopter airborne and generally speaking, we’d be flying to a road accident scene where a critical patient is airlifted. We take a specialist resource to the scene. Unprepared landing zones are utilized a majority of the time, such as road surfaces or out in the bush or on mountaintops. The paramedics and doctors would tend to treat the patient, get them back into the aircraft, and we’d go into an appropriate facility where the patient would receive a high level of care.”