On 29th December, the Austrian OAMTC organisation flew the 10,000th mission from its base at Salzburg.  A 44 year old female driver skidded on icy roads and ended up against a tree, resulting in the milestone call-out 10 minutes flight from Salzburg for “Christoph 6”, a Eurocopter EC135.  The team involved were emergency physician Josef Lanner, paramedic Wolfgang Beran, rescue crew Hans-Jörg (“Jogi”) Pfeiffer and pilot Tom Brändle.

“Christoph 6” is currently averaging around 900 missions per year since the base was set up on April 2001.  Nearly 35% of all bets are internal medicine emergencies such as heart attacks, followed by sports and leisure accidents (15%), transport accidents (13%) and neurological emergencies (10%).

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com