Have you ever tried to navigate the inner city district of a complex metropolitan area? How about at night, or in IFR? If you have, then you know the challenges that downtown Boston, Mass., poses for air ambulance operators. Boston MedFlight, a nonprofit organization that provides transport regardless of the patient’s ability to pay, covers five hospitals interspersed among skyscrapers and other vertical obstacles, all located three miles or less from Boston’s Logan International Airport. Boston MedFlight transports upwards of 3,800 people a year, both on the ground and in the air. On average, the organization performs 150 aeromedical transports a month.
The group is being honored this year at Heli-Expo 2016 with the BLR Aerospace Safety Award for the work it did to address the problems in Boston, developing instrument approaches to the hospitals using GPS navigation. Boston MedFlight worked with the Infrastructure Team, as the government and industry group referred to itself, and over the course of five years the team designed the instrument approaches and got them FAA certified. After certification, the team had to work with air traffic controllers to train them on the new procedures and ensure that helicopters landing at or departing from the hospitals have minimal impact on arrivals and departures at Logan International, one of the nation’s busiest airports.
Final approval and authorization to begin using the new procedures came on Oct. 14, 2015. These approach procedures allow helicopters to land and depart from Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (helipad also used by Boston Children’s Hospital), Boston Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center under marginal weather conditions.
“New England weather can be hazardous and largely unpredictable,” said Boston MedFlight CEO Suzanne Wedel. “This new instrument approach technology will allow us to more safely complete those transports that are within our capabilities. We are thrilled to have this new capability in our toolbox.”
It didn’t take long, with winter approaching, for validation of all that hard work. The first use of an aviation instrument approach procedure to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital helipad was 5:15 p.m. on November19, when a Boston MedFlight helicopter transporting a critically ill child executed the procedure to the helipad safely.
This multi-phase project will eventually connect outlying community hospitals across eastern Massachusetts with downtown Boston medical centers through a network of low-altitude instrument flyways that will allow Boston MedFlight helicopters to remain safely clear of other aviation traffic. MedFlight will now look to finalize GPS approaches to community hospitals, and share the developments with the Northeast Air Alliance, a consortium of all the medical helicopter providers from eastern New York to Maine.