Transporting the family and other concerned parties aboard air medical aircraft

Patients flown on air medical aircraft are separated from family and other concerned parties, often for several hours and many miles. This paper studies the usefulness and safety of offering transport to these passengers on air medical aircraft. A nine-item questionnaire was mailed to 95 program directors. Only those air medical operations flying aircraft with the capability of carrying additional personnel were targeted. These aircraft included all fixed-wing craft; the helicopters included Bell 222, MBB BK 117, Sikorsky S-76, and Aerospatiale SA 365 Dauphin. Seventy responses were received. From these responses it was concluded that more than half of all helicopter programs can carry a patient's family, but do so only 5% of the time. All fixed-wing programs can carry family of patients and do so from 35% to 95% of the time. Various benefits and disadvantages were discovered, analyzed, and discussed.