Whats tough about flying an air ambulance?
When I got the job, I was already an experienced pilot – but I’d never even seen a broken leg. On my second day, we went to a 250-car pile-up, with four people dead. It certainly isn’t for everyone. For the air ambulance to be called, it’s got to be serious. We deal with a lot of car crashes and industrial accidents, and we went to the London bombings in July 2005. You see horrible sights, and it can be tough for a new pilot. What skills do you need? You need to be a very capable, natural pilot. There’s a lot of thinking as you go, in a constantly changing environment – you don’t have time to plan routes. We’re a crew, so you really need to be a team player. We encourage everyone to learn about each other’s jobs, so it helps to take some emergency medical courses. In terms of qualifications, first you need a commercial pilot’s licence, which usually takes at least a year, and then masses of experience of fast low-level flying. What advice would you give someone who wanted to be a helic
