Luxembourg Air Ambulance (LAA) has just purchased a second Learjet 35A for use primarily on short and mid-range air ambulance missions. In a country with just 450,000 inhabitants, EBAN had no trouble tracking down financial director Frank Halmes to find out a little more about this latest purchase.

Halmes said: “Most of our medevac flights are northbound but we transport people all over. We’ve actually carried out missions from both the US and Africa to Europe, but our main business is from the Mediterranean region, or from the Canaries to central Europe.”

LAA has been operating its first Lear 35A since 1999 and says Halmes, it is the best model Learjet for this kind of operation. “The Lear 45 is expensive,” he said “so it is quite difficult to get a positive financial yield out of it, in this particular area of work.

“You might invest around 3.5 million dollars in a fully equipped Lear 35 and if you compare it to a Lear 45, you have to invest almost double the amount.

“With the Learjet 60, yes you have a slightly longer range but the disadvantage is that the 60 has quite an old wing which means you need a long runway to accommodate this aircraft. Also, the DOCs for the Lear 60 are much higher than for the Lear 35 and you don’t need the big luxury cabin that the 60 offers.

“So the 35s are ideal for landing on shorter airstrips, for accommodating patients and for their costs of purchase and operation.”

During the low season, LAA accepts vip work for one of its Lear 35s but says Halmes, this area of business only accounted for seven per cent of its operations last year. Asked which area – medevac or vip – offered the most profitability, LAA’s financial director had no hesitation in answering.

“The profitability of medevac work is poor,” he said “because your overheads for equipment and staff are higher and because there’s a lot of competition for this type of work. However, if you can provide a high quality standard and a complete bed-to-bed transfer package – which we do – there’s money to be made.”

Despite this assertion, it is not an issue that weighs heavily on Halmes’s mind, not least because LAA parent company Luxembourg Air Rescue, is a non-profit organisation. A Luxembourg initiative, it is 100 per cent privately owned and is supported by almost 150,000 citizens, donors and members of the association.

“Our dedicated corporate objective,” said Halmes, “is to provide this help to citizens.”

With fifteen years experience in air rescue missions, LAA operates a total of three helicopters and three fixed-wing aircraft.

Following this latest delivery, the company says it is entering a period of consolidation and will not be making any further additions over the next few months.

The company, which is fully certified to ISO9002 standards and boasts an array of multilingual med-ical staff, also operates the Luxem-bourg police helicopter service.