Ten-year-old Londoner, Sam Munden, may well have a change of helicopter to thank for his life. On New Years Day, the new Virgin HEMS helicopter, an MD-900 Explorer, played a major role in the boy’s rescue from a frozen lake. \r

Captain John Salt was able to hover out over the water in order that a paramedic could drag the drowning boy out of the water and to safety. Had Virgin still been operating its Dauphin, as it was two and a half months previously, the boy may not have been saved.\r

Chief pilot of Virgin HEMS operations, Alistair McGill, explained: “In the Dauphin, there would have been a difference in the rescue attempt, two things critically: Firstly, the Dauphin didn’t have as good a single engine performance and probably wouldn’t have been within the single engine hover IGE.\r

“Secondly, the Dauphin had wheels not skids and the configuration is different. We’ve got sliding doors on the Explorer, whereas the Dauphin had big doors. With the Dauphin, we’d probably have had to land and jettison the door to be able to get reasonable access down. It would probably have meant dipping the belly of the aircraft into the water. \r

“I can’t say one way or the other whether the outcome would have been different but the configuration of the Explorer with sliding doors and skids, made it very much easier and sped up the process considerably.”

During this particular rescue, there was not a great deal of time to play with. Having slipped through the ice roughly roughly ten minutes earlier, Munden was beginning to lose consciousness when the Explorer arrived on the scene. McGill told EBAN: “In the doctor’s own words, Sam had seconds rather than minutes to live. His core temperature was down to 30 degrees which is seven below normal. \r

“At 30 degrees, you’re disorien-tated, you’re not getting enough oxygen to the brain and you’re confused. Sam was starting to lose his hold on the edge of the ice and would undoubtedly have drowned.”\r

The reason Sam didn’t drown is because of the very quick thinking of the Virgin HEMS team. Said McGill: “When the crew arrived at the lake, two people were trying to break through the ice to get to the child, who was 25 to 30 metres out in the middle of the pond. The London Fire Brigade had also just arrived on the scene. \r

“In view of the time the child had been in the water and the temper-ature of it, it became quite apparent that there was no time to discuss what to do. It had to be an evaluation in the air, an immediate decision. The decision was to hover over the land just beside the pond, secure everything inside, open the door and then hover out over the water. In this instance, the aircraft was inside single engine hover IGE – so, effectively, they had full single engine performance. The crew assessed that the risk was minimal to them but that the child was in imminent danger of his life.”\r

In the event, paramedic John Warwick grabbed onto doctor Malcolm Russell, who balanced on one knee on the skid, reached down and grabbed Munden by the scruff of his clothes and yanked him out.\r

Said McGill: “It was a good bit of precision flying from Captain John Salt to hover-taxi into the middle and an excellent show of teamwork to rescue the child.”\r

In all, the rescue took just 16 minutes, from the time Virgin HEMS staff were activated to the moment the aircraft landed back at the Royal London Hospital. The distance between the hospital and Wanstead Park, scene of the frozen lake, is four and a half nautical miles. The co-pilot onboard was Richard Shuttleworth.

Virgin HEMS has been operating the Explorer since October 18, 2000 and is carrying out an average of three to four missions a day. With regard to the team’s experience of the aircraft so far, McGill told EBAN: “I am firmly convinced it is the machine for the job. We’ve got a few teething problems – for example, the medical equipment has been a bit slow in arriving – but it’s close to completion now. This hasn’t been hindering our operational ability, it’s more a cosmetic issue.\r

“Probably the single biggest difference between the two aircraft – the speed – is not actually material to us. The Dauphin had a higher cruise but it’s not as though we’ve got to travel any great distances. The additional payload that we have is obviously advantageous.\r

“One of the other great advantages of the Explorer is that you can actually see people waving their arms on the ground. The Dauphin was a very good aircraft but it did not have brilliant visibility up front. The Explorer is exceptional, you can see everything really clearly.”