Not in a Mobile Service Area

Last week I went on my first medevac. The downside was that my dad was the patient - he tripped on his boat and ended up falling backward onto a stag horn, then somersaulting into the water. Fortunately he’s okay, though it could have easily been worse - he has internal bleeding around his kidneys, and last week he wasn’t able to stand for more than about 10 mins, and not able to sit at all. As a result, we decided to call in our company travel insurance, and engaged a jet to fly up to Newcastle. This is exactly the sort of thing we do for our clients, we’ve just never had to do it for ourselves before, so it was an interesting experience.

Sitting in the back of a jet, after a short safety briefing, and with the blessings of the pilots, I had the opportunity to check on a few things:

• Electronic Games, iPods, etc… they don’t interfere with anything. I suppose if the aircraft were to come to a sudden stop, my iPad could fly out of my hands and decapitate another passenger, but that would be the least of my problems if the aircraft did stop in such a fashion. I could hear the pilot’s iphone going off a fair bit, so it doesn’t bother them.
• When you make a call while in the jetstream, you will get an ‘out of service’ message. Your SMS’s will start popping up as you come in to land.
• Security Restrictions on the airport apron of a RAAF base are strict enough that it’s easier for you and the pilot to pee in the bushes on one side of the runway than it is to get through security to the loos.

It took 1:40 to get to Newcastle, and about 2 hours to return. Dad is now resting up, and this week he’s back at work, so this worked out a lot better than sitting on a jetstar flight.