Glenville air ambulance service busy after hurricanes

PHOTOGRAPHER: Photo Provided

A REVA crew walks toward their plane in this undated image.

GLENVILLE — An air ambulance service has been flying increased missions from its Glenville facility as its operations centers in Florida and then San Juan were clobbered by hurricanes in rapid succession.

Fort Lauderdale-based REVA, which calls itself the largest fixed-wing air medical transport provider in the Americas, created its Northeast operations center at the Schenectady County Airport in late 2015. It already had operations centers in Phoenix, San Juan and Fort Lauderdale.

It currently has one Hawker 800XP based in Glenville and is planning to add a second. They are staffed by 30 on-call medical crew and eight full-time pilots.

Company spokeswoman Judy Wilson said recent weeks have been an unprecedented period in the company’s history — two massive hurricanes that have boosted demand for its services even as they damaged its facilities.

“Just since the 8th … there does seem to be a surge,” she said. Half the patient flights since Sept. 8 have been disaster-related, she added, including four patients transported from the Caribbean region by Glenville-based crews after Hurricane Irma. The other half have been the standard roster of people injured or ill through other causes. The total is more than twice the normal workload.

REVA’s Fort Lauderdale headquarters was shut down for more than a week as the company and its employees recovered from the storm.

“Nobody has suffered personal well-being issues, but property damage is another story,” Wilson said.

As things had returned to normal in Florida, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. REVA evacuated its planes, equipment and employees from San Juan as the monster storm approached; they’re now in service elsewhere.

“Those planes are currently active,” Wilson said.

Maria isn’t projected to affect Fort Lauderdale or Glenville, so barring the unexpected, REVA can continue operations there as it assesses and repairs the damage in San Juan.

In a normal year, Wilson said, winter is the busy season, as seasonal residents need to return from their warm-climate homes for medical treatment.

“Different circumstances cause surges in our business,” she said.

REVA has flown 25,000 missions in 65 countries and averages about 1,200 a year with its 17 dedicated air ambulance aircraft.

It offers bedside-to-bedside service around the clock for patients as young as newborn and as heavy as 410 pounds. It will also fly organ-transplant teams and donated organs. Its medical personnel have a minimum of three years’ critical care and/or emergency room experience, and include flight nurses, physicians, neonatal nurses, paramedics and critical care nurses.

The fee can be substantial for what is essentially a private flight in a corporate jet converted to an intensive-care unit and crewed by highly trained medical professionals. Wilson said the distance of the flight and the makeup of the medical team aboard are the main cost-determining factors. Patients’ families can fly along at no additional charge.

REVA announced in November 2015 it would set up its Northeast operations center at Glenville in a then-new 20,000-square-foot hangar built by Richmor Aviation, the airport’s fixed base operator. The Schenectady County Metroplex Development Authority provided a $36,000 grant to assist with the move.

Wilson said as the company planned expansion of its operations at the Schenectady County Airport, it appreciated the recent federally funded runway improvements and the business climate created by the Glenville Local Development Corp.

Gazette reporter Stephen Williams contributed to this story.