A Day in the Life of : Fixed Wing MEDEVAC Pilot

I've been flying as a fixed-wing medevac pilot in the Rockwell turbo commander for about three years now and have always wanted to make a video documenting a day in a life of pilots like me well here it is finally the video you are about to watch will give you a glimpse into the life of a fixed-wing medevac pilot flying single pilot IFR and VFR underpart 135 for those contemplating this career field hopefully this video will help you make an informed decision for those just curious about what we do I think you'll find this video enjoyable so without further ado here is a day in the life of a medevac pilot so let's start with the work schedule first it's not sexy and it's not exciting but it's a big part of the job not all medevac jobs will have the schedule I'm about to explain but this one is fairly first all the way till 6:30 and it's 12 hours so day shift I'm on from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and then I'm on my own time until 6:30 a.m. the next day vii I'm at home on vacation seven days off until I go back on night shift on the 15th I got to be back in Safford by 6:30 p.m. and I'm going to work all the way until 6:30 a.m. on the 22nd with the schedule worked out it's now time to hit the road for a 7 day shift I live in Phoenix but my base is in Safford Arizona three and a half hours drive to the east on Tuesday morning a little after 3:00 a.m. and start the long drive to my base Sanford is located in southeastern portion of Arizona at the foot of Mount Graham the second tallest peak in the state the town of Safford population nine thousand can be considered remote the town roots go back to the 1800s much that old western town charms still exists farming and mining are the staples of savage copper and cotton reign supreme [Music] Mount Graham Regional Medical Center provides medical support for the region the town has had an airfield since the earliest days of aviation and aviation is deeply intertwined in its history today the current airport is located 10 miles north of town as our first destination upon arrival and Saturday [Music] [Music] the first order of business upon arrival at base is to thoroughly preflight the aircraft and become familiar with changes in the aircraft maintenance status and any maintenance that was performed during the week I was off my company operates the rockwell turbo commander other medevac companies operate twin-engine King airs and single-engine Pilatus pc-12 I prefer the commander the garrett engines delivering over 700 shaft horsepower aside are much more powerful than the king airs and of course the commander has two engines which beats a single-engine Politis any day the planes max ramp weight is ten thousand three hundred pounds requiring only a pilot to hold a multi engine certificate in order to operate unlike the Pratt & Whitney pt6 the garrett TP 330 is a geared turboprop which means power is instantaneous upon application the turbo commander will fly and climb without hesitation on just one engine making it a safe and reliable platform for flying single pilot IMC at night over mountainous terrain first thing we need to do see what's happened to the airplane maintenance wise since I've been gone fire extinguisher inspection and I'm just looking at different maintenance to see what maintenance is transpired since I've been in off duty for the last seven days and if there's any new entries that I'm going to make particular note of those making sure the airplane is not grounded my company operates under an FAA approved electronic flight bag program this approval allows us to carry traditional paper documents such as the opspecs gum minimum equipment list aircraft manuals approach plates and enroute charts in electronic format saving many pounds in weight and streamlining updates we use for flight running on an iPad as our efb platform the days of updating the jet chart binders weekly has slipped in the aviation history at least for this company in addition to for flight we use a form program to handle all of our flight paperwork requirements this includes electronic versions of the weight and balance calculations risk assessments and flight cards which document block times flight times duty times and other maintenance and customer billing metrics [Music] Hunter which is what we normally care is flame burnt about 600 pounds an hour [Music] with the plane pre-flight done it's time to head to the crew house and unpack for my week stay this is where I will spend the majority of my week waiting for the call to go fly located about six miles from the airport the crew house is less than a 10-minute drive toward the door I'll take a look inside giving the nickel tour [Music] [Applause] so this is a hundred-year-old farmhouse that's been renovated and it's got everything we need get a nice kitchen microwave of a little place to eat your lunch dinner this is our living room nice and sunny we got cable we got Internet we've even got an exercise bike everything we need to pass the time only two of us are using the crew house so there's two bedrooms pretty large notice the black curtains so when you're on night shift you can sleep without having the Sun wake you up cable TV we've got an office with a computer so we can do our pre-flight planning and play computer games surf the internet whatever we need to do bathroom running water shower toilet everything you need to be comfortable laundry room washer and dryer hot water no all the basics everything you need this is where you're gonna spend seven days all by yourself now let's take a look at the typical flight profiles that I fly from Safford now my particular company again we're going from Safford it's the only town we service going into Tucson or going into Phoenix those flights are about 3035 minutes give or take and the distances are quite short 80 nautical miles to Tucson and Phoenix our longest leg 125 miles so they're all cross-country but they're they're short hops up and down usually we don't go higher than 12,500 feet at a time we go to Phoenix we go into Phoenix Sky Harbor the primary Class B Airport however there are times when we'll go to the reliever airports we've been to Phoenix Mesa Gateway Chandler Scottsdale Deer Valley Glendale over on the west side so we go we go to all the reliever airports in the valley Tucson there's not a whole lot of choices Tucson International Class C Airport and then I guess if never had to do this but if the weather was really bad there or there was a thunderstorm we could go to Ryan or Marana off to the to the west side each day prior to the start of my shift I will get familiar with weather conditions for the day and its potential impact on flight operations one of my favorite weather resources is the National Weather Service's aviation weather Center website you can see the outlook for this particular week is blue skies and sunshine excellent fall weather for stress-free flying but if you think Arizona weather is always like this you would be dead wrong we get our share of challenging weather conditions including fog low visibility believe it or not snow gusty winds sometimes as high as 35 knots dust storms known as haboobs and dangerous airmass thunderstorms one of the last pre-planning things I will do is check no domes and TFRs for this I like to use for flight and the main thing I'm doing here is checking the NOTAM x' for my home airport as well as any of the major airports that I'll probably be going to so I'll just check those and make sure nothing's changed and that I'm aware of the NOTAM x' so I'm that much further ahead when I get the phone call to go to one of these places so now we just wait for the call it could be hours it could be days but eventually the call will come you pass the hours however you like here's just a few examples of how I passed mine [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] there's the call here we go [Music] what's up man awesome alright got it thanks thank you all right we got our flight it's time to go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for Municipal Airport automated weather observation two more [Music] one four zero hi system can't afford deploy to zero I'll give it her 3 0 1 0 remark to the Eldar time not available in her hundred never came back to another packet or 'listen be too hostile surf traffic mechs on hotel Juliet's text from the ramp want to say Sanford traffic my backside hotel Julie I'll be taking off front way want to be wide right now in departure to the West 7 [Music] Neb traffic my backside hotel Julia it's three to the southwest so thousand six hundred climbing one few thousand five hundred Southwest bouncy sound right you thought I put information that goes there were four five trees of the observation win one six zero for weather but I want to show I'll tell Julia to sell the plane she could even squawk 0:43 for interactive another thought Julia radar contact would you like growing to on this evening affirmative sir somehow deadly I doctor I don't know Julie decided a straight-in runway two one no restriction or diem a straight for to want something that touch nothin okay Julia cute that heroin will do it for runway hit one cleared land so to land to want will be parking at Atlantic seven Hotel Chile [Music] [Music] so the crew is gone the only thing we have to do now is provide our fuel order to the FBO fairly simple for this flight leg it's 300 pounds to get the Tucson takes 300 pounds to get back so we need 600 pounds of fuel an easy way to convert fuel pounds into gallons is to just take the 60 take half of that that's 30 add 60 and 30 that's 90 so we need 90 gallons of fuel it's a real simple simple pilot math there [Applause] sorry line then extraordinaire then my best friend [Applause] [Applause] heading into the FBO get the crew car and change into my uber hat now and go pick up the crew the med crew from the hospital which is about 25 minute drive [Music] I've seen a little bit have a good night all right head to the crew car Vanek has nice crew cars unlike some of the beaters poop these I've seen all right 20 minutes later we have arrived at the Tucson Medical Center the biggest Hospital in Tucson where we go 85% time so the crew came here by Ambo but I got to pick them up and take them back because hambo charges if they take the crew back to the airport and there is the crew already dropped off patient [Music] one two five point one squawk four three five five commander one to seven hotel chili juice on ground turbo commander one to seven heads up to Atlantic Riddick to axe to the apart Sanford [Music] well one let me to tell 20 senators there's on to our clan 27 turbo commander one to seven hotels could dig up blood director [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so there you have it a day in the life of a medevac pilot ironically I'm filming the conclusion of this video at the conclusion of my three-year time as a medevac pilot next week I start a new adventure as a charter pilot flying the beech premier jet I thoroughly enjoyed my time flying the turbo commander I grew tremendously as a pilot in the past three years and was very fortunate to fill the experience bucket before the luck bucket ran out thank you again for watching special thank you to my subscribers if you have any questions about this video leave them in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them [Music]

Channel: Flying Wild AZ

Views: 294,383

Rating: 4.8840671 out of 5

Keywords: MEDEVAC, Turbo Commander, Ted Smith, life flight, medical, evacuation, airplane, aircraft, pilot, a day in the life of, flight training, aircraft disaster, safford, 690B, Tims Aviation Adventures, Tim Timmons, aviation career, arizona, phoenix, N127HJ, Tucson, KSAD, KTUS, KPHX, flying, COVID-19, Corona, Virus, EMT, medical emergency, first responder, airevac, Commander, rockwell, TPE, 331, Garrett, approach, ZAB

Id: R1Kc0heKcf0

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2020