Waikato Regional Airport has relocated its medical flight operations to the southern end of Hamilton Airport.
A Life Flight plane refuels at Hamilton Airport
More than 3000 flights a year use the airport for critical aeromedical services across the central North Island. Until recently these flights shared landing space with commercial airlines.
Ben Langley
Medical flights are carried out by air ambulances and by medical staff transporting donor organs and patients.
Airport operations group general manager Ben Langley says the move improves patient privacy and brings flights closer to Waikato Hospital, where many patients are transferred to and from.
“In terms of security, they don’t have to worry about conflicting with our international processes,” he said.
The aircraft used include turboprops, private jets, and specially outfitted planes equipped with medical equipment.
They now operate from the former L3 Airline Academy hangar – an aviation training facility the airport took over five years ago.
Life Flight at Hamilton Airport
“We originally sought flight trainers for that but there’s a whole lot of complexity in that sector so for one reason or another, it sat vacant for some time and we saw the opportunity to use if for medical flights,” said Langley.
Common uses include transferring patients needing acute care at a tertiary hospital – such as Waikato, Middlemore and Auckland hospitals – or flying premature babies to one of the country’s six neonatal intensive care units.
The facilities are also used by Life Flight, which operates the Wellington-based Westpac Rescue Helicopter and a growing fleet of air ambulances nationwide.
Life Flight, a non-profit organisation, has been a cornerstone in providing urgent aeromedical care for patients around the country for almost 50 years.
Last year it added a fourth air ambulance plane to its fleet of King Air B200C aircraft and it is now permanently based at Hamilton Airport.
A Life Flight plane pulls into the hangar at Hamilton Airport.
