Image
Toll has taken delivery of three new Agusta-Westland AW139 helicopters that will form part of its fleet of purpose-built aircraft set to support critical emergency medical operations in southern New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory as part of a 10-year aeromedical contract with NSW Health.
Five more AW139 helicopters – currently being designed and built in Italy – will follow, with the fleet of eight scheduled to take to the skies when the contract begins in 2017.
Each helicopter features twin 1800 horse power engines and is constructed from specialised components manufactured across the world, with assembly on the production line taking 13 weeks to complete. Toll Helicopters project engineers, flight test engineers and senior pilots thoroughly inspect the aircraft before acceptance flights are conducted in Milan, Italy.
Only when final acceptance is confirmed is each helicopter carefully disassembled and flown to Melbourne in a cargo plane where it is reassembled again by teams from Agusta-Westland and then the final test flights are conducted with the Toll Helicopters team.
From Melbourne, Toll Helicopters takes each AW139 helicopter and heads north, cruising at a speed of 300 kilometres per hour before some operational transition training is completed with landings in the south of Sydney on the helipads at the hospitals they will service when the NSW Health contract begins.
Over the coming months, the helicopters will be fitted with specialised medical equipment that will see them become best in class aeromedical helicopters able to provide the best in ambulance and rescue support.
Toll will support the Ambulance Services of NSW and ACT with the provision of emergency response services to the southern region of New South Wales with a fleet of eight AW139 helicopters operating from four bases in Wollongong, Orange, Canberra and Bankstown, which is also the home of Toll’s new Aeromedical Crewing Excellence (ACE) Training Centre.
The training centre, due to be completed mid-2016, will be one of the most advanced aeromedical training centres in the world; featuring a high fidelity AW139 training simulator, a Helicopter Underwater Escape training (HUET) simulator and other state of the art training equipment, the centre will provide comprehensive training for Toll operators as well as aeromedical pilots from around the world.