Derbyshire air ambulance to launch new lifesaving helicopters

The Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland Air Ambulance (DLRAA) along with the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance (WNAA) have begun a helicopter replacement project which will come to fruition in early 2021.

Every day of the year, your local air ambulance is helping to save more lives at no cost to the NHS. Thanks to the speed and flexibility of the helicopters, within minutes they can be at an incident delivering pre-hospital critical care to patients in order to give them the best chance of survival and recovery.

As part of the charity’s aircraft replacement project, the clinical teams took the opportunity to review their current and future helicopter requirements and decided to replace the current iconic yellow and grey helicopters with another two new, state-of-the-art AgustaWestland 109SP (AW109SP) – the world’s fastest Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) aircraft.

Director of operations for DLRAA, Richard Clayton, commented: “As part of our scheduled programme we are replacing our two emergency aircraft as they come to the end of their working life.

“The HEMS aircraft replacement programme has provided an opportunity to ensure that our future air ambulances allow us to continue delivering the highest quality of critical care and enable us to evolve our operational capabilities with future clinical developments.”