Services
Air ambulance and medical evacuation
In short
How does a private air ambulance work?
A medical evacuation is a charter flight on an aircraft configured with a stretcher and clinical equipment, crewed by a doctor and a flight nurse in addition to the pilots. It is arranged through the same market as any other charter, but the aircraft is specialised and the decisions are medical rather than commercial: the treating physician, not the passenger, determines what the flight needs.
01How it works
Arranging air ambulance and medical evacuation
What has to happen before an aircraft moves
A doctor at the sending hospital provides a medical report and confirms the patient is fit to fly. The receiving hospital confirms it will accept the admission. Only then is the aircraft configuration decided — stretcher, incubator, intensive-care equipment — because that determines which aircraft can be used and therefore what it costs. Attempting to book the aircraft first wastes the hours that matter.
Timing, honestly
Within Europe or the Gulf a medically equipped aircraft can usually be airborne within six to twelve hours of the medical paperwork being complete. Intercontinental repatriation takes longer, and the delay is almost never the aircraft — it is landing permits, the receiving hospital, and ground ambulance at both ends. We will give you the realistic timeline in the first reply rather than an optimistic one.
Insurance
Most medical evacuations are paid by an insurer or an assistance company rather than by the family. If there is a policy, tell us the insurer and the case number at the outset: they frequently have their own approved providers, and coordinating with them from the start is faster than arranging a flight they will later decline to cover.
What is actually on board
A stretcher fixed to the airframe rather than laid across seats, oxygen, suction, a ventilator where the condition requires one, an infusion pump and a defibrillator. Intensive-care configurations add monitoring and, for neonatal cases, an incubator. The clinical crew is normally a doctor and a flight nurse, sometimes a specialist matched to the condition. Cabin altitude matters more than most people expect: a pressurised cabin still sits at the equivalent of six to eight thousand feet, which is a problem for some cardiac and respiratory conditions and occasionally rules out an otherwise suitable aircraft. Where that applies, a larger aircraft able to fly at a lower cabin altitude becomes necessary, and the treating physician rather than the broker makes that call. Accompanying family is usually limited to one or two people, because a stretcher configuration removes seats.
02Constraints
Worth knowing before you ask
The treating physician decides fitness to fly. We arrange the aircraft, not the medicine.
Cabin altitude matters for some conditions and can rule out certain aircraft.
A stretcher configuration reduces passenger seats; accompanying family may be limited.
03The aircraft
Aircraft typically used
Drawn to one scale from real airframe dimensions. Which one suits your trip depends on the leg and the load rather than the passenger count alone.
Midsize jets
7–9 pax · 56 ft span
Super-midsize jets
8–10 pax · 69 ft span
Heavy jets
10–14 pax · 64 ft span
04Your part
What to send with the request
Every service has two or three details that change the answer entirely. Including them in the first message turns one exchange into a quote instead of four.
- The medical report
- From the treating physician, confirming the diagnosis, the current condition and fitness to fly. Nothing can be configured before this exists, and requesting an aircraft without it wastes the hours that matter.
- Both hospitals
- The sending facility and the receiving one, with confirmation that the receiving hospital will accept the admission. Repatriations stall on this more often than on aircraft availability.
- The insurer and case number
- If a policy exists, tell us at the outset. Insurers frequently have approved providers, and coordinating from the start is faster than arranging a flight they will later decline to cover.
05Before you pay
What we commit to on every booking
We have no completed flights to point at yet, and we are not going to invent any. What we can do is put the terms in writing before you ask for them.
What we commit to
Nothing is charged before the aircraft is confirmed.
You receive the operating carrier’s legal name, its AOC number and the aircraft registration in writing before any invoice or wallet address is issued. If those three things are not in front of you, you have not been asked to pay yet.
One commission, inside the price you were quoted.
Our margin is already in the number you agreed to. There is no second invoice, no booking fee added at the end, and no separate charge for arranging the flight. If the total moves after you have accepted it, the reason is a change you asked for.
No surcharge on any payment method, including cryptocurrency.
Card, bank transfer, USDT, Bitcoin and cash settle at the same price. We do not price crypto as a premium service, and we do not discount it to move you onto a rail that is harder to reverse.
If the operator cancels, you choose the remedy — not us.
Aircraft go technical and operators occasionally fail. When that happens before departure you are offered a replacement aircraft on equivalent terms or a full refund, and the choice between them is yours. We do not get to decide that a substitute was good enough.
These form part of our terms of business. If any of them changes, the change is dated there rather than made quietly here.
06Get aircraft options
Tell us the trip
Route, date and how many people is enough to start. Anything specific to this service — an animal, an equipment list, a medical report — can follow in the same thread.
Questions
- How quickly can you find me a private jet?
- Initial aircraft options typically come back within 15 minutes, at any hour — that is how fast a broker can check, not a promise that an aircraft will be free. Send the route, the date and the number of passengers, and you get back the aircraft actually available, the operating company and indicative pricing. If the route needs a landing permit — Saudi Arabia and India are the common cases — availability comes back in minutes but the permit itself can take 24 to 48 hours, and we will say so in the first reply rather than after you have paid.
- How do you check that an operator is safe?
- Every flight is operated by a company holding a valid air operator certificate in its own jurisdiction. We check that certificate and the operator’s insurance cover before offering the aircraft, and any third-party safety audit it holds — ARGUS, Wyvern or IS-BAO. Not every good operator holds one, so we never imply one that has not been verified for that operator. You receive the operator name, and any audit status, before you pay so you can verify it yourself.
- What payment methods do you accept?
- Card, SWIFT and SEPA bank transfer, Bitcoin, USDT (TRC-20 and ERC-20), and cash on departure where local law permits it. There is no account to open and no compliance onboarding to complete before you can request a quote — identity checks happen once, on the flight you actually book.