Gama Aviation awarded WAAC contract

Gama Aviation has made a successful bid for a £65 million, seven-year contract to operate and maintain WAAC’s primary fleet of four Airbus H145 helicopters, which fly from bases in Caernarfon, Cardiff, Dafen and Welshpool. The contract will come into force from 1 January 2024. Gama will also maintain the charity’s backup H145 helicopter under the same contract.

The decision to award the contract was made by the charity’s trustees ‘following an extensive 18-month procurement decision which included input from both aviation and medical professionals’.

Historically, the leases for WAAC’s aircraft were held by the contracted operator, rather than the charity itself – something that WAAC’s Chief Executive, Dr Sue Barnes, said ‘felt like a potential risk to our services, particularly at a time of global uncertainty’. Under the new arrangement, the leases for three of the aircraft will be held directly by the charity.

She added that ‘during the procurement … we were aware that we would face significant increases in re-contracting costs’ and that while in some ways this is an ‘inevitability of long-term contracting agreements, global factors have also exacerbated this’.

“A like-for-like aviation service now totals just over £3 million more per annum,” she explained. “We were faced with a stark choice – to cut our cloth according to our existing levels of donations and reduce the number of aircraft, or rise to the challenge of maintaining our existing fleet, with the passionate and ongoing support from the people of Wales. We agreed that the right thing to do was to maintain our existing fleet.”

WAAC will operate its Welshpool base until at least 2026

WAAC also confirmed that it will extend its contracts with Caernarfon Airport and Welshpool Airport – home of two of its bases – until at least 2026. This announcement addresses recent public concerns that the charity could close its Welshpool base. WAAC had proposed doing so – and relocating its crew and vehicles – to a new site in North Wales, in an efficiency analysis published in August 2022.

“There will be some who will point to recent proposals to consider changing base locations and suggest that this was a cost-saving plan when faced with difficult choices on aviation costs. Nothing can be further from the truth. These costs will be the same regardless of whether the service operates out of three bases or four,” said Barnes, adding that: “Given the need to ensure continuity of service and mindful of the need to give our airbase landlords some commercial certainty, we will commence our new aviation contract with our current four-base model.”

The contract’s announcement comes at a time when WAAC’s medical partner, the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service (EMRTS), is being undertaken by the Chief Ambulance Services Commissioner. WAAC said that the as-yet-undetermined outcome of this review ‘has been reflected in the new aviation contract’, with the potential to modify elements of the services outlined (revised base locations, revised operational hours, enhanced after-dark flying, etc).