Page 8 - Volume 11 Number 12

About MedCenter Air
MedCenter Air is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, and provides emergency and critical care patient transport services for the Carolinas HealthCare System with a fleet of fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and ambulances. The fixed-wing aircraft are operated by Sterling Aviation, LLC, a Texas-based company that manages several medical transport aircraft.
MedCenter Air offers national and international transport through four fixed-wing aircraft – two Beechcraft King Air B200s and two Cessna Citations. The aircraft are equipped with advanced medical equipment including cardiac monitors, ventilators, multiple IV infusion pumps, advanced drug therapies and an intra-aortic balloon pump.
Medical staff and pilots are available 24 hours a day for emergencies and scheduled patient transports. Pilots are provided by Sterling Aviation, LLC and two pilots are scheduled for every flight for safety. Pilots are highly experienced and are required to have an FAA Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) Certificate, more than 2,000 hours of previous flight time, an FAA first-class annual flight physical and attend annual recurrent training, including flight simulation. The highly qualified medical crew must also meet rigorous requirements for their field.
The aircraft are also used for organ transplant transfers and transportation.
MedCenter Air’s pilots at shift change getting those coming on duty up to speed on operations.
Fueling and preflight before the next call.
carrying. The crisis in Beaumont, Texas, eventually took top priority as the city was flooded with water, but had no clean water to drink, which required the mass evacuation of all patients from hospitals in that area.
Operations from the FEMA base in Temple were described by MedCenter Air’s Pilot Chris Frishmuth as “impressive, as dozens of aircraft from around the country were assembled and dispatched from the airfield.” Aircraft were usually pushed in waves from Temple to Beaumont, where they would wait – sometimes a few minutes, other times, hours – for patients to be evacuated. The medical crews had to be flexible and adapt as oftentimes they had little or no idea of what type of patient, and their medical needs, would be showing up at the aircraft. Assessments were made on the fly, but handled “with their typical professional calm,” described Frishmuth. The overall state at Beaumont was described as “organized chaos” with fixed-wing airplanes, dozens of helicopters, including military aircraft of all types running around the airspace on a multitude of missions. ATC and communications were generally very good in Texas, unlike what this team would face later in Puerto Rico.
During the Harvey deployment, there was a unique challenge for the MedCenter Air crews – the odd shift schedules that were required. Day pilots were assigned a shift from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., while the night shift was on duty from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. So there was really no true day or night shift since a good bit of time was spent during both, and finding rest during the off times was a bit of a challenge. During each shift, the crews working were required to be at the airfield, resting on
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N209CM on short final to Charlotte, North Carolina, completing the Hurricane Harvey deployment.
cots in the hangars and finding ways to pass the time until their aircraft got called up for a mission. During shift change, the previous crew would get those coming on call caught up on operational notes and discuss the events that happened during the shift.
MedCenter Air’s maintenance team supported the aircraft from afar as the aircraft flew many hours on its humanitarian missions. There was 100 percent reliability and dispatch rate for the aircraft. After a week in Temple, the air ambulance teams were deactivated by FEMA and the medical crew, pilots and aircraft returned to MedCenter Air’s home base of Charlotte ... and would do it all over again a few weeks later in Puerto Rico. KA
Thank you to pilot Chris Frishmuth for allowing us to pull information from his blog and use his photos for this article.
DECEMBER 2017