Multiple missions for Air Ambulance Service and Skyline Aviation on one night

Skyline Aviation and the New Zealand Ambulance Service worked around the clock on medical missions. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand Air Ambulance Service and Skyline Aviation were kept busy with multiple missions on Wednesday night.

That included a trip from one end of New Zealand to the other, and a flight to the South Pacific on a critical life-saving mission.

NZAAS managing director Annabel Toogood said they were tasked with multiple complex international and domestic life-saving missions within the space of an hour.

"One of our critical care teams departed directly from Napier to Suva at 9.50pm on Wednesday to save a 19-year-old male with a severely compromised airway.

"He was flown directly to Auckland hospital in our recently commissioned Cessna Sovereign jet, arriving there safety in the hours of Thursday morning."

"Also at the same time, our Auckland-based service was tasked to undertake an urgent mission to Dunedin."

A team of 16 NZAAS and Skyline staff - comprising clinical directors, doctors, nurses, pilots, engineers, loadmasters and mission coordinators - worked throughout the night under immense pressure to ensure the complex missions went as smoothly as possible.

"We are very fortunate to have four jet aircraft in our fleet in addition to our four King Air turbo prop aircraft and have a large team of highly skilled and passionate staff who can respond to multiple missions happening across New Zealand and the South Pacific at the same time."

It seemed the night would never come to an end; at 5am on Thursday, another NZAAS clinical team departed to Apia to repatriate an ill patient to Auckland.

In July, Napier's Skyline Aviation and the NZAAS successfully completed their first medical evacuation of a patient from Vanuatu to New Zealand in their recently commissioned Cessna Sovereign 680 jet.

The mission departed directly to Vanuatu from Napier with a full intensive care team on board.