Three minutes to take-off

Sunday 9th June 2019

Lerryn WI always open up the second part of their meeting so that anyone in the village is free to come and hear the guest speaker. When David Earl came to talk to us about the Cornish Air Ambulance, we had to get out extra chairs.

David talked about the impressive achievements, but also the limitations, of the current helicopter. 

When emergency calls for this region are received at the headquarters in Exeter, decisions are taken quickly about what is needed and the service most readily available.The normal expectation is that the gap between receipt of call and take-off of helicopter will not exceed three minutes, and the helicopter should then be able to reach most destinations within ten minutes of take-off.

However, in the current helicopter such targets can sometimes be hard to reach.The new one will be faster, more spacious, and medically more sophisticated. It will also have double the range and be better able to cope with night flying and low cloud conditions. Its additional speed and efficiency should cut waiting times by ensuring a faster turn-round between jobs. Please note: more than £7.5 million needed by next April!

We had already given the speaker a donation to the appeal, but it was gratifying to see so many of our visitors come up to make their own additional contributions to him at the end.

Ann Henderson