I’m a little confused about the arguments Island Airport enthusiasts keep raising about fixed wing medevac.

 If this was so important, New York City would be converting a big hunk of Central Park into an airstrip so that organs and patients can be brought speedily to Manhattan hospitals by fixed wing aircraft. That’s not happening, of course. In New York, and other major cities, airports are on the outskirts, not in the centre of the City.

First , it seems– organs have quite a few hours from their removal before they must be in the recipient’s body – one study I found showed that paediatric hearts could take up to eight hours from the donor to the recipient –without adverse effect. There are similar, and even longer, acceptable times in the literature for kidneys and livers.

Organ transplants are an emotional issue, to be sure, but not an excuse for an airport in the middle of our City.

Ditto with fixed-wing medevac: patients must be stabilized before they can be transported long distances by air. That removes the urgency.

Helicopters are used for those critical patients who must get to a hospital quickly. They don’t bring their patients to the Island Airport – they go directly to hospital heliports.

CommunityAIR’s study, confirmed by Ontario’s air ambulance service, ORNGE, and using its data, clearly establishes that helicopter response times for reaching critically-ill patients are materially detrimentally affected by the current location of the base – it is at the bottom, not the centre, of the area served. Moving the base to a more central location would significantly improve response times for ORNGE’s missions, and dramatically improve the livability of the waterfront communities – a win-win, to be sure. To quote that study:

There were warnings from health professionals when the decision was made in 1991 to move the service from Buttonville to the Island Airport. Our report finds that, for our study period, those warnings proved to be valid: 

-          20.8% of flights (655 out of 3144) suffered at least a seven minute delay

-          57.1% of flights (1796 out of 3144) suffered a delay between five and seven minutes

These are flights carrying critically ill patients where minutes make a huge difference in survival rates.

Brian Iler, Chair, CommunityAIR