DEVON Air Ambulance has signed a contract to buy a new state-of-the-art Airbus H145 helicopter, which will be on duty from the service’s Exeter airbase from mid-2020.

The charity says it prides itself on being a dynamic and forward-thinking, committed to providing the very best patient care and ensuring the service continues to grow and improve.

It says the signing of the contract is the next exciting step in its development.

It says that the existing helicopter, which is already "night flight ready" and operates up until midnight every day, will replace its older aircraft, currently flying from the service’s North Devon airbase near Umberleigh.

Heléna Holt, CEO of Devon Air Ambulance said: “We aim to replace our helicopters, on average, every 10 years.

"We have undertaken extensive research into what would be the best helicopter to meet our current, and future, operational needs.

"We are fortunate that we have some extremely knowledgeable flight operations and clinical staff, who have been fully engaged over the past 18 months looking at all the options available to us, not only for the airframe itself, but also the state-of-the-art interior and medical equipment we can carry.”

She continued: “As our main consideration is always to provide the very best care to our patients, this has been paramount as we have looked at what new helicopters are available. We feel that the H145 is perfect for our current and future needs.

“The H145 has significantly more accessible cabin space than our current EC135s and this extra size gives us greater capacity and flexibility as we continue to enhance the service we can offer to our patients.

“An added benefit is that our existing Exeter aircraft will move to work out of our North Devon airbase, thereby meaning that both our aircraft will be capable of flying into the hours of darkness when we look to extending this part of our service.”

Devon Air Ambulance owns its current two aircraft. The new aircraft purchase will cost in the region of €8.5m (£7.6m), but this will be offset by the onward sale of the older helicopter, G-DVAA.

Ian Payne, Flight Operations Director for Devon Air Ambulance added: “We are looking forward to welcoming the H145, registration G-DAAS in 2020. The aircraft type which was chosen for many reasons, is in service with several air ambulance units in the UK and numerous emergency operations throughout Europe.

“A successful, mature product, H145 is manufactured by the same organisation as our EC135s so in addition to operational performance we will be able to build further upon the strong working relationship with Airbus developed over many years.?“As a result, there are clear opportunities for future fleet harmonisation bringing efficiencies in operational planning, logistic and engineering support, training and aircraft safety.” 

 The contract signing took place at Sidmouth Rugby Club, which is one of the 80+ community night-time landing sites.

Helena added thanks to the generosity of the community, businesses and friends of Devon, for making the next step forward for the charity possible.

She explained: "Last year it cost £6.4 million to keep the service flying and in 2017 we helped 990 patients.

"To-date we have completed 26,000 missions and a large number of lives have been touched as well as people’s friends and families.