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26 REPORT
Lifesaving
logistics
By Clemens Bollinger
A child’s heart on its way to the transplantation room, hospital flights from vacation regions, evacuation after
natural disasters: three key facets of ‘lifesaving logistics’, of an increasingly close symbiosis between aviation and
medicine. It is foremost the aircraft that offers efficient lifesaving transportation with medical care en route.
Flying the way it used to be, that’s what the
German Air Force (GAF) pilots flying humanitarian
missions ought to have down pat. “In
their indoctrination and continued training,
we’re still putting a high priority on flying and
landing by compass needle and stop watch,”
says GAF major André Geisler. “After all, we
never know for sure what’s waiting for us at
the destination. Perhaps they have some
decrepit old navaid system running there, or
maybe not, and maybe it just up and died
meanwhile.”
Commander of an Airbus A310, Major
Geisler is part of the parent cadre of the
Special Air Mission Wing, Federal Ministry of
Defense, at the Cologne/Bonn airport. It’s
from this airport that he has flown to all continents,
embarked on many trips, travelling
with ‘very important politicians’ and hauling
myriad tons of relief supplies to crisis
regions in Asia and Africa, and made those
special flights as the commander of a flying
intensive-care unit, the GAF’s Airbus
MedEvac transport.
Its MedEvac operations are luring interested
parties from across the globe to the GAF
hangars at Köln-Wahn. The acronym stands
for Medical Evacuation, and in this case for
the presently unique capability to pick up as
many as 56 injured people and fly them
home, from wherever they may be, providing
medical care underway. That’s the way it was
in Congo, Sudan, Mexico and most recently
Thailand, where in 2004 a tsunami crippled
the country with an apocalyptic visitation at
the turn of the year.
It was a medical Airbus transport flying
under the German national ensign that first
reached Phuket to evacuate German citizens
and other seriously injured Europeans, and
that steadfastly remained when all other rescue
teams had already flown off in awed
anticipation of a second sea wave. At that
time, the flying hospital had not finished
loading yet, and speed and nerve were of the
essence. When the jet finally taxied to the
take-off runway, doctors and medics hung on
for dear life among the aluminum frames of
stretchers holding injured people.
If not earlier, it was since these dramatic
days marked by continuous missions of 80
hours and more that the Special Air Mission
Wing with its very special medical logistics
has been thrust into the spotlight. High-profile
voices call it a landmark of German foreign
and security politics.
The German MedEvac aircraft are Airbus
A310s operated by the Special Air Mission
Wing. Of the totally seven airplanes, bought
secondhand in the nineties, four were retrofitted
for multi-role transport (MRT) and one
as a permanently available emergency hospital.
The MedEvac airplane can be aloft just hours
after the alert. Lieutenant colonel, Medical
Corps, Dr. Karlheinz Fuchs, as the medical
chief, has been onboard on practically all of
the missions. “The book says we have 24
hours to ready for takeoff, but we can do it in
eight or so. What we do is fly medical specialists
and medics from all over Germany to
our base, assemble them into a team, brief
them, and off we go.”
REPORT 27