Fundraising launched for air ambulance in north Staffordshire

Stoke Air Ambulance says that it has already selected an aircraft, which could be delivered as soon as the end of 2023. The aircraft reportedly costs around £5.8 million to purchase outright, or £2.15 million on a five-year lease, with a trained pilot. It is currently unknown where the aircraft would be based.

According to Phil Copeland, CEO of Stoke Air Ambulance, the new service would offer response times of ‘within 10 minutes’. 

However, the area which would be served by the new operator is already served by Midlands Air Ambulance (MAA), which operates from three bases, in Cosford, Tatenhill and Strensham.

It is unknown how Stoke Air Ambulance would operate in relation to MAA, however the latter organization has stated that 'there are no plans for MAA to lose any part of our operating patch [and] the ambulance service has openly stated they would not task this new service as the service MAA provides is more than sufficient for the area.'

MAA added: "According to West Midlands Ambulance Service, Stoke and the surrounding area has sufficient access to world-class pre-hospital patient care, through the ambulance service and our own helicopters and critical care cars. MAAC is the sole provider of air ambulance services for Stoke and Staffordshire. On average we are currently sent on missions eight times per week in Staffordshire, either from the Tatenhill Airbase, located in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire, or from the RAF Cosford airbase. Last year, 750 of our air ambulance missions were in Stoke / Staffordshire, this is 30 per cent of all mission call outs by air ambulance."

In the US, another fundraising effort by Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District (TDFPD) is campaigning to raise US$60 million to acquire two firefighting helicopters to permanently serve Lake Tahoe on the border of Nevada and California.