The contract has been transferred from Capital Air Ambulance to Gama Aviation.
There are no plans to include Alderney, where patient transfers face an uncertain future as work on finding an airline to operate a public service obligation that may or may not include medevacs continues.
Under the terms of the initial five-year deal with the States of Guernsey and Jersey, Gama will retain the crew and aircraft which have been used by Capital, which are unsuitable to provide a link with the Bailiwick’s northernmost island.
‘The provision of the patient transfer services between Alderney and Guernsey and the air ambulance service between Guernsey and the UK are covered by two separate legal contracts,’ said a Health & Social Care spokesman.
‘We have previously looked into the possibility of extending the air ambulance services of the Guernsey-UK services to Alderney but the planes currently used for that service are not suitable for the provision of the services between Alderney and Guernsey.
‘In addition, the difference in case load between the two services has not to date required the full air ambulance service to be rolled out for Alderney as the majority of cases can be transferred and dealt with at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital in Guernsey, so a patient transfer service is adequate for that short duration of travel.’
The weather and wind conditions are said to have to be perfect for the Beechcraft King Air B200 air ambulance aircraft to be able to land in Alderney.
Any discussion of the future of the services to the island would be dependent on the outcome of the PSO process.
Gama Aviation already provides special mission services to law enforcement, defence, air ambulance and other UK government services. The company announced recently new contract wins with the RAF, Joint Helicopter Command and the Home Office.
It is hoped that the contract with Guernsey and Jersey will help secure the long-term sustainability and resilience of the service here in the islands as it provides a 24-hour, 365 days a year service between the Channel Islands and UK mainland health services.
Its group chief operating officer Neil Medley said: ‘Given our focus on special mission service provision, our existing aviation facilities in Jersey and our Beechcraft Authorised Service Centre in Bournemouth, we are ideally placed to deliver a long and successful partnership with each bailiwick.’
The plane for the Guernsey-UK services will be based in the UK. It is currently in Exeter, although this will change to Bournemouth in due course.
During lockdown, a plane had been based in Guernsey every weekend due to the restrictions in Exeter and its airport opening hours.
The cost of the deal with Gama Aviation is said to be commercially confidential and will not be released.
A previous contract with Capital Air Ambulance, which was awarded in 2013, was approximately £1m. per annum for Jersey and £500,000 a year for Guernsey.
Capital Air Ambulance has provided the service for seven years, after being awarded the contract again in 2018 following a joint competitive tendering process between Guernsey and Jersey.
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