A Learjet 45 air ambulance aircraft is now part of the DRF Luftrettung fleet, having taken off last week on its first mission, an emergency repatriation of a patient from Portugal to a German hospital for surgery. After the DRF dispatcher clarified the medical facts, the crew set off for Faro. On arrival, they took charge of the patient and transported her to Munich that night while giving her intensive care on board the Learjet.

To coordinate global operations, the DRF Luftrettung alert centre at the airport of Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden is staffed with experienced dispatchers around the clock, 365 days a year. Project manager Herbert Kauth comments: “Our Learjet 45 will most often take off on its missions in a double stretcher configuration, so that we can always transport two patients at the same time. This allows us to combine patient transports despite tight deadlines, for example if a patient in Tenerife and another in Gran Canaria must be picked up and flown to the same country.”

The aircraft was purchased in South Africa and is easily refuelled through single point filling, which uses a single nozzle to which all tanks are connected.