Intense activity for the crew of the 93rd Flight Group's medical alarm with 5 legs starting in the middle of the night and almost 16 hours of deployment. A Falcon 900 Easy from the Air Force's 31st Wing took off last night from Ciampino airport bound for Pisa San Giusto airport in order to pick up a medical team for the subsequent organ retrieval at the Vito Fazzi hospital in Lecce; the final destination of the transport was the Transplant Centre of the A.O.U. of Pisa.
The request for intervention, received from the Prefecture of Pisa, was managed by the Summit Situation Room of the Air Force Command in Rome.
Once the mission became operational, the base operations centre contacted the on-call staff who promptly arrived at the 31st Wing for mission planning.
The aircraft departed at 02:30 in the morning for the Tuscan stopover and, after collecting the medical staff, comprising two surgeons, it departed for Brindisi Casale Airport, as Galatina Airport, being the closest to the hospital for the intervention, was not operational during the night hours.
During the leg, the Chief Crew member proposed to the team that they carry out the new boarding from the Galatina military airfield, which would have been opened in the meantime during the period necessary to carry out the expropriation operation. In this way, the distance from the Lecce airport, which is a few minutes from the Salento hospital, compared to the Brindisi airfield, would have shortened transfer times.
The aircraft took off from Lecce at 13:00 local time, a few minutes after the end of the operating theatre procedure.
The mission concluded with a return to Ciampino in the afternoon, after surgeons and the organ had departed from the 46th Air Brigade in Pisa shortly after lunchtime. Experience, professionalism, and training: a team effort to save a human life, a service carried out throughout the national territory, including islands, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Air Force crews and transport aircraft are ready day and night to ensure, where requested and deemed necessary due to urgency, the medical transport of people in imminent danger of death. Thousands of flight hours are carried out each year by aircraft from the 31st Wing of Ciampino, the 14th Wing of Pratica di Mare, the 15th Wing of Cervia, and the 46th Air Brigade of Pisa, assets always on the front line in case of emergency.
