New air ambulance in full flight

By Gillian Slade on April 10, 2018.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com  @MHNGillianSlade

Not only was the new air ambulance contractor ready to operate by April 1, it was even ahead of schedule.

CanWest Air’s new fixed-wing King Air 250 aircraft was at the Medicine Hat base on March 22 ready to operate well ahead of the deadline of April 1 as the new contractor under Alberta Health Services, said Craig Ripley, CanWest Air base maintenance engineer.

Although the taxiway to the company’s new hangar at Medicine Hat airport is still to be black-topped in May, when the airport will be temporary closed for work on the main runway, the hard-packed surface would fool many into thinking it is already complete. Ripley says contractors simply rolled the surface repeatedly to achieve the super hard surface.

“It’s very, very compact,” he said.

CanWest has already completed about a dozen air ambulance flights since taking over the contract a little more than a week ago, said Ripley.

“We’ve had nothing but good reports from the medics. They’re all excited and (so are) the flight crews,” explained Ripley, as he showcased the interior of the brand new aircraft that can handle up to two patient stretchers per flight plus four seated passengers, including two medics.

Five of the seven pilots for the fixed-wing air ambulance were hired locally and two others were already with the company but were previously based elsewhere, said Ripley. The entire crew is living in Medicine Hat now. The request for proposals for fixed-wing air ambulance services for Alberta was issued Aug. 9, 2016. AHS signed a contract with CanWest in September 2017 to provide service across most of the province, including this region, effective April 1, 2018.

CanWest received approval from Medicine Hat city council on Dec. 18 to lease 1.09 acres of land at the airport.

CanWest agreed to construct at its own cost the access road and the taxiway from the existing taxiway network. The following day crews were ready to commence construction. Regardless of a very snowy winter, construction crews were able to complete the task of building a new hangar and creating the taxiway in record time.

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