AN AMBULANCE helicopter has been grounded until further notice, after the company operating it went bust.

The Wiltshire Air Ambulance helicopter had already been stopped from flying, after a fault was spotted on Wednesday.

But the collapse on Thursday of Kent firm Heli Charter, which operates the Semington charity’s Bell 429 helicopter, means Wiltshire Air Ambulance will be unable to use the aircraft for the foreseeable future.

A spokesman for the air ambulance said the charity was applying for its own Air Operator Certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority, covering the organisation to run the helicopter directly. It is not known how long before the certificate will be awarded to the air ambulance charity.

Wiltshire Air Ambulance’s five pilots are already employed directly by the charity and have not been affected by Heli Charter going into voluntary liquidation.

A charity spokesman said: “As is always the case, we continue to respond to medical emergencies from our two rapid response vehicles, which carry the same specialist medical equipment that is on-board the helicopter.”

Helicopters from local air ambulance charities, including Great Western and Thames Valley, would be available if a patient needed to be airlifted, the spokesman added.

Busy

Wiltshire Air Ambulance attended 871 incidents last year, taking on average 11 minutes to reach the emergency calls.

The organisation is only partly funded by the NHS, with South Western Ambulance Service paying half of the costs of the Wiltshire critical care paramedics’ salaries. It costs £3.25m a year to keep the helicopter in the air, or the equivalent of almost £9,000 a day.

Woes

Last year, the helicopter was plagued with issues that saw it put out of action for weeks over the summer.

In June, the Bell 429 aircraft was grounded after it spun out of control during an engine test before coming back to rest on the helipad. It was kept out of the skies for over a month while replacement parts were sourced from America.

The helicopter was grounded again in August, as army specialists checked the aircraft for traces of nerve agent Novichok. It was believed paramedics who went to treat poisoning victims Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley had later flown in the helicopter.

In the latest safety incident to hit the aircraft, on Wednesday, January 2, a pilot checking the helicopter’s engines noticed that the systems did not perform as expected, Wiltshire Air Ambulance said.

A spokesman added: “The decision was made to ground the aircraft until such time as the manufacturer’s support engineer had downloaded flight data recorder data for analysis. At no time did the pilot lose control of the aircraft.

“Since aircrew and patient safety is our primary concern, we will wait for the results of this data analysis before the helicopter resumes flying operations.”

The Civil Aviation Authority said they were aware of the latest safety incident.

What is Heli Charter? What happened to the Kent firm?

Bosses at air ambulance operator Heli Charter blamed growing investment requirements as they placed the firm into voluntary liquidation.

The company, which was based at Manston near Margate, had provided Wiltshire Air Ambulance’s Bell 429 helicopter since 2014. It was one of the first air ambulance charities to use the helicopter type.

Heli Charter founder Ken Wills died in 2017 and it appears the company struggled to recover from the loss of its director. A spokesman told the Isle of Thanet News: “During the last quarter of 2018 it became apparent that the investment needed to sustain and grow the business was not economically viable.”

The firm held the licence, called an air operator certificate, covering the Wiltshire Air Ambulance helicopter. With the company in liquidation, that AOC is no longer valid.

A spokesman for Wiltshire Air Ambulance said it was trying to get its own certificate

He said: “The charity has its own contingency plan, which has already begun. For some time we have been looking to secure our own AOC and those preparations are well advanced and its issuance imminent.”

The Civil Aviation Authority, which issues AOCs, could not say how long it might take for the certificate to be issued.