Carried out on the morning of last Friday, the two flights allowed as many compatriots to receive the necessary treatment
Both flights were ordered to the Wing by the Top Situation Room of the Air Force General Staff, which, having assessed the intervention requests from the local prefectures, deemed the Wing’s aircraft to be the most suitable among those on “readiness” to carry out the missions.
The first flight took off from Pratica di Mare, where the crew of the 93rd Flight Group and the Falcon 900 Easy were deployed to ensure readiness for take-off. The emergency medical flight from Naples to Palermo allowed a 36-year-old female patient to reach ISMETT – the Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Highly Specialised Therapies – in the Sicilian capital with the timeliness necessary to receive the organ transplant she needed. A few hours later, another aircraft from the Wing, a Falcon 50 of the 306th Flight Group, took off instead for Catania to collect a 5-month-old patient and subsequently take him to Rome. Once back at the base, the crew and the Sicilian medical team entrusted the infant to the care of the doctors at the “Bambino Gesù” hospital in Rome, a centre of excellence for paediatric treatments, where the young patient was expected for hospitalisation and the treatment of his delicate condition. Emergency medical flights, humanitarian flights, organ transport and medical evacuation flights are guaranteed on a daily basis by the 31st Wing in favour of the civilian population through the coordination of the Top Situational Room of the Air Force Staff, which interacts with Italian embassies and military attachés abroad as well as national prefectures, in order to respond promptly to transport requests. .
The Wing comprises two Flight Groups, the 93rd and 306th, and comes under the command of the Mobility and Support Forces Command, based at Centocelle.
The Wing operates with Airbus 319, Falcon 50 and Falcon 900 aircraft. Readiness for such requirements is guaranteed 24 hours a day, every day of the year, with two aircraft and crews dedicated and ready to take off with minimum notice for any national or foreign location.
