A Day in the Life of : Fixed Wing MEDEVAC Pilot

I've been flying as a

fixed

wing

medevac

pilot

on the Rockwell Turbo Commander for about three years and always wanted to make a video documenting a day in the

life

of

pilot

s like me. Well, here is finally the video it is about. Seeing will give you an insight into the

life

of a

fixed

wing

medevac

pilot flying single pilot ifr and vfr under part 135 for those contemplating this career field. We hope this video helps you make an informed decision for those who are simply curious about what we do. I think you will enjoy this video, so without further ado, this is a day in the life of thousands of medevac pilots, so let's start with the work schedule first.

It's not sexy or exciting, but it's a big part of the job. Not all medevac jobs will have the schedule I'm about to explain, but this one is pretty weak. October will be a day shift and will run from October 1st until 6:30 and it's 12 noon, so day shift. from 6 30 am to 6 30 pm and then I'm on my free time until 6 30 am the next day 7 I'm home on vacation seven days off until I go back to night shift on the 15th I have to I'll be back in Safford at 6:30 p.m. m. and I go to work until 6:30 a.m. m. on the 22nd with the schedule resolved.

Now it's time to hit the road for a seven-day shift. I live in Phoenix but am based in Safford, Arizona, a three and a half hour drive east. On Tuesday morning, shortly after three a.m., I begin the long drive to my base. Safford is located in the southeastern part of Arizona, at the foot of Mount Graham, the second highest peak in the state. The town of Safford, with a population of 9,000, can be considered remote. The town's roots date back to the 19th century and much of the charm of the old western town still exists. Agriculture and mining are the staples of Safford's copper and cotton reign.

Supreme Mount Graham Regional Medical Center provides medical support to the region The city has had an airfield since the early days of aviation and aviation is deeply intertwined in its history Today the current airport is located 10 miles north of the city ​​as our first destination upon arrival at Safford another trip the first order of business upon arrival at The base is to perform a thorough pre-flight of the aircraft and familiarize yourself with the changes in the maintenance status of the aircraft and any maintenance that has been performed during the week I was away. My company operates the Rockwell Turbo Commander.

Other medical evacuation companies operate twin- and single-engine King Airs. Pilatus PC-12 I prefer the Commander, the Garrett engines delivering over 700 shaft horsepower are much more powerful than the King Air and of course the Commander has two engines which outperforms a single engine Pilatus in any moment. The airplane's maximum ramp weight is 10,300 pounds. It only requires a pilot to have a multi-engine certificate to operate, unlike the Pratt Whitney PT6, the Garrett TP330 is a geared turboprop, meaning power is instant upon application, the Turbo Commander will fly and climb without hesitation with a single engine, which will make it a safe and reliable platform for flying IMC with a single pilot at night over mountainous terrain.

The first thing we need to do is see what has happened with the maintenance of the plane since I went to inspect the fire extinguisher and I'm just looking for different maintenance to look at. what maintenance has occurred since I have been out of service for the last seven days and if there are new entries, I will make particular note of those ensuring the aircraft is not grounded. My company operates under an FAA approved electronic flight. baggage program, this approval allows us to carry traditional paper documents, such as operating specifications, minimum equipment list, aircraft manuals, approach plates and route charts in electronic format, saving many kilos of weight and streamlining the updates we use for flights that run on an iPad like our EFB platform.

The days of weekly updating aircraft map folders are long gone in aviation history, at least for this company, in addition to Forelight we use a forms program to handle all of our flight documentation requirements, this includes electronic versions of weight and balance calculations, risk assessments and flight cards. which documents block times, flight times, service times, and other maintenance and customer billing metrics. The first thing I'm going to do is see how much fuel I have on board and it's exactly 12:00, which is what we normally have. The plane burns about 600 pounds per hour. So, with the pre-flight over, it's time to head to the crew house and unpack for my week-long stay.

This is where I will spend most of my week waiting for the call to fly, located about six miles from the airport, the crew home. It's less than a 10 minute drive door to door, let's take a look inside and we'll give you a tour of the nickel. This is a 100 year old farmhouse that has been renovated and has everything we need: nice kitchen, microwave, small place. for lunch and dinner, this is our living room, nice and sunny, we have cable, we have internet, we even have a stationary bike, everything we need to pass the time, only two of us are using the crew house so that there are two quite large bedrooms, notice the black. curtains so that when you are on the night shift you can sleep without the sun waking you up cable tv we have an office with a computer so we can do our pre-flight planning and play computer games surf the internet whatever we need to do bathroom running water shower toilet everything you need to be comfortable laundry room wash and dryer hot water so all the basics everything you need this is where you will spend seven days alone now let's take a look at the typical flight profiles flying from Safford now my private company again we go from Safford it is the only city we serve going to Tucson or Phoenix those flights last approximately 30 35 minutes more or less and the distances are quite short 80 nautical miles to Tucson and Phoenix our longest leg it's 125 miles, so they're all cross country, but they're short hops up and down, we usually don't go above 12,500 feet, so when we go to Phoenix, we go to Phoenix Sky Harbor, the main .

Class B airport, however, there are times when we will go to relief airports. We've been to Phoenix Mesa Gateway, Chandler, Scottsdale, Deer Valley, Glendale, on the west side, so we go, we go to all the relief airports in the valley, Tucson, there aren't any. a lot of options at Tucson class c international airport and then I guess if I never had to do this, but if the weather was really bad, there's a storm, we could go to Ryan or Marana to the west side every day before. At the beginning of my shift, I will familiarize myself with the day's weather conditions and their potential impact on flight operations.

One of my favorite weather resources is the National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center website. You can see that the outlook for this particular week is blue skies. and sunshine great fall weather for stress-free flying, but if you think Arizona weather is always like this you would be dead wrong, we have our share of challenging weather conditions including fog, low visibility, believe it or not, snow, flurries of wind sometimes up to 35 knots. dust storms known as haboobs and dangerous air mass storms one of the last pre-planning things I will do is check the nodums and tfrs for this.

I like using forflight and the main thing I'm doing here is checking my local airport nodems. as well as any of the major airports I'll probably go to, I'll just check them out and make sure nothing has changed and that I'm aware of the nodems, so I'll be much further ahead when I have the phone call to go to one of these places, so now we just wait for the call, it could be hours, it could be days, but eventually the call will come, you spend the hours however you want, here are just a few examples of how I spend mine, yeah, come on.

Come on baby, come on, well there's the call, here we go, what's up Matt? We got a freezer flight. Brilliant. Very good. 148 pounds to Tucson. Without passenger. Good. I have it. Thank you. Thank you. OK. We got our flight. It's time to go to work. So, huh? municipal airport automated weather observation zero five two four minutes one four zero to zero seven visibility one zero system test Todd good not available the julia hotel will take off runway one two will be wide to the right downwind exit to the west side so that juliet's hotel three southwest seven thousand six hundred going up one two thousand five hundred southwest bound tucson direct youth airport mister julie hotel accident head julia hotel straight on runway two one no restrictions on dm good direct for two one seven connected to that two seven hotel julie two centers with one one zero four runway two one clear ground 2-1 we will be parking the Atlantic 7 hotel so the crew is gone all we have to do now is provide our fuel order to the FBI pretty much simple for this The leg of the flight is 300 pounds to get to the Tucson, it takes 300 pounds to return, so we need 600 pounds of fuel.

An easy way to convert pounds of fuel to gallons is to just take 60, take half of that, that's 30 in 60 and 30, that's 90. We need 90 gallons of fuel, so very simple, simple, pilot, there , Scottish lineman extraordinaire and my best friend head to the FBI, take the crew car and put on my super hat now and go pick up the crew, the medical team from the hospital, that is. about 25 minutes drive, okay, we'll see in a moment, have a good night, okay, we're heading to the crew car. Atlantic has nice crew cars, unlike some of the beaters, poop, I've seen these well, 20 minutes later.

I got to Tucson medical center, the biggest hospital in Tucson and where we go 85 of the time, so the crew came here on ambo, but I have to pick them up and take them back because the ambo charges if they take the crew back to the airport and there the crew already left the patient waiting for me 125.1 squawk four three five five commander one two seven hotel julian tucson turbo ground commander one two seven hotel to the atlantic ready to taxi through from trip commander stafford one two seven hotel runway from julia tucson ground one one turbo commander 127 julia direct hotel fairgrounds at course altitude thanks there you have it a day in the life of a medevac pilot ironically I'm filming the conclusion of this video as I conclude my three - year as a medical evacuation pilot next week I will begin a new adventure as a charter pilot flying the beach premier jet.

I really enjoyed my time flying the turbo Commander. I have grown tremendously as a driver over the past three years and was very fortunate to be able to complete the experience. cube before the lucky cube runs out, thanks again for watching, a special thanks to my subscribers, if you have any questions about this video, please leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them.