Typical Ch9 rubbish

[MarkR]

Quick, we need some vision of those P&o passengers:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/video/video-news/video-world-news/bus-crash-victims-flown-home-20160622-4gw2a.html

Pity the plane hasn't left Queensland!

[lloyd fox]

Yeh the 4 aircraft that flew VLI-BNE yesterday

were VH-CXJ,BLM,VPL,LJQ.

[MarkR]

Thanks for the info LLoyd, it was a good opportunity to help publicise the work Careflight do given they are not a government agency nor fully funded by them.

The scenario certainly stretched resources given the aircraft involved, any more and I suspect the RAAF would have to been involved with a C17 airlift.

[Radi K]

Mark - the money for the jets comes from insurance. These jets go and come from the islands all the time picking up sick people who have travel insurance.

Careflights jets aren't doing these runs for charity - it's a very 'for profit' part of their business.

[MarkR]

Mark - the money for the jets comes from insurance. These jets go and come from the islands all the time picking up sick people who have travel insurance.

Careflights jets aren't doing these runs for charity - it's a very 'for profit' part of their business.

Hi Radi

While it's true that they do come and go often (with 222 missions and 1508 hours flown across four company aircraft in 2015), it's not often you hear of such a big requirement being met by what is a charity run service, and should be publicised to give credit where credit is due. Insurance is no doubt the main customer, but I think you will find its not an exclusive one, as is the likely case with this incident.

Retrieval medicine is a good revenue stream for Careflight (and a somewhat logical one), the $7M profit it contributed last year to the Careflight group helped to cover some of the $19m cost of the community helicopter operations where no one is primarily picking up the bill, something that cannot be said for other commercial enterprises in this space.

[Radi K]

Is the suggestion that Careflight run the community helicopters without government contracts/funding?

[Mark Grima]

According to their 2015 annual report, careflight received $50.5 million in government funding in the 14/15 year.

Cheers

M

[Rowan McKeever]

CareFlight NT operates almost (if not completely) exclusively on a government contract and is part of the same overall group.

[Radi K]

There might be some slight confusion as the careflight queensland ops is quite separate to the other sections.

Both roughly receive 65-70% government funding.

[MarkR]

Is the suggestion that Careflight run the community helicopters without government contracts/funding?

Not at all, they receive contributions that fund partially the community helicopter operations, including straight out grants which represent 20% of their income to cover a portion of the op-ex needs.

[Mick F]

I'm pretty sure that Careflight has various government contracts that would cover the majority of the costs. But they're not the only ones either.

I'm no expert in international medical retrievals, but I highly doubt that Careflight would be spending their own money on doing them. Happy to be corrected though.

Mick

[Jethro H]

Sorry, just catching up with threads since holidays:

CareFlight Group Qld (LifeFlight) was involved in this operation, not CareFlight (NSW).

CareFlight Group Qld (LifeFlight) is not related to CareFlight based in Westmead, who also operates CareFlight NT.

So to save confusion and since they also merged not long ago with Northern QLD Helicopter Service, they are now called "LifeFlight".

The costs are picked up by Insurance, and what is not picked up is under the 10 year contract with the Qld Government, who entail are able to part-claim from the Federal Health allowance.

[Jethro H]

Is the suggestion that Careflight run the community helicopters without government contracts/funding?
CareFlight Group Qld (LifeFlight) is fully funded by QLD Governemnt on a 10 year contract.
CareFlight (Sydney) is mostly funded by NSW Government, but their Darwin operation is fully funded by the NT Government.

[MarkR]

CareFlight Group Qld (LifeFlight) is fully funded by QLD Governemnt on a 10 year contract.
CareFlight (Sydney) is mostly funded by NSW Government, but their Darwin operation is fully funded by the NT Government.

Careflight Group QLD is not fully funded by the Government. They received funding from the government for new helicopters and it was mentioned at the time by their chairman "The current funding at the moment is a bit over $60 million a year, about a third of that comes from government."

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/racq-careflight-secures-300m-10year-funding-agreement-20141214-126tob.html

Careflight LTD in NSW received $50M of its $80M revenue from government while their operations in NT are funded by the government and a separate $45m contract supporting one aircraft for INPEX.

[Jethro H]

Thanks Mark for clarifying QLD, I was sure that the 2014 deal was a 'fully funded' contract, but I cant find that detail anymore.