Yorkshire Air Ambulance's longest serving pilot and paramedic reflect on their work for Yorkshire charity ahead of its 23rd anniversary

Yorkshire Post

Yorkshire Air Ambulance was first set up in 2000 and Garry Brasher, Pilot, along with Sammy Wills, Paramedic, talk us through their work since they first started.   It ties in with the charity's 23rd birthday at the end of October.

Transcript

00:00 My name's Sammy Wills, I'm a paramedic for Yorkshire Air Ambulance and today we're at

00:05 Nostal Air Support Unit. I have been working for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance for 21 years now.

00:12 It's been a privilege and my favourite thing is I think because I've been able to serve alongside

00:18 every single paramedic that there's ever been, from the founding fathers right through to our

00:23 brand new five that started last week. 74 paramedics. I'm a paramedic, I'm a critical care paramedic

00:30 that works for Yorkshire Ambulance Service, the NHS Trust, but I'm seconded to work on the Air

00:35 Ambulance and the two have a partnership level agreement where we're able to provide the best

00:40 clinical care for the whole of Yorkshire public. Over the 21 years it has changed incredibly. My

00:48 bag used to be like this big, one, now I've got a selection of which I have to choose what I'm

00:53 going to take and they're a lot lot heavier, which means we've got additional kit, we've got blood,

00:58 we've got ventilators, we've got the ability and the capacity to literally bring the hospital

01:03 to the patient side and treat them and then fly them swiftly to the most appropriate hospital.

01:09 It's a dream job, it is a dream job and the satisfaction comes from knowing that as a team

01:15 we are able to provide the best care together and the fastest with the most up-to-date kit,

01:22 with the best drugs, with the best people and it is a collective of fantastic teamwork.

01:28 Hey, so I'm Gary, I'm one of the pilots and also head of training for Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

01:34 I've been with the charity now for just over 10 years, I've just received my 10 years award from

01:38 the charity for the longest serving pilot. Well I started off 10 years ago just as a normal line

01:43 pilot, we didn't have instrument rating back then, I got off of my instrument rating then I went on

01:48 to a training role and an examining role and now I'm just head of training and covering leave and

01:53 sickness with the chief pilot. Before I was with charity, I was with another charity flying the

01:58 same aircraft down south, before that I worked for the police for three and a half years before

02:03 it moved to Enpas and before that was military, flying for the army air corps. I started off as

02:08 infantryman, yeah many moons ago, so I was in the green hours back in the late 80s in Northern Ireland

02:16 and I got fed up of walking and progressed into flying. In fact I was in Catrick in the green

02:21 hours for many years, then I moved to Northern Ireland and various other places but then I moved

02:26 to the army air corps down Middle Warwick. It was starting off with Sash and Sems on the old MD902s

02:31 then we moved on to Yak and Yowa which are the 145 D2s and now we've got the brand new D3s,

02:38 Yorks and Yaw which are the new ones all singing all dancing, yeah very good aircraft. They're

02:44 fantastic to fly, it's more like flying a computer, it's pretty much similar to flying an airliner

02:50 inside the autopilot wise, you've got full four axis autopilot so it'll bring itself to the hover,

02:55 we can pretty much fly it just by pressing buttons. Then doctors, top notch, I'd like to

03:01 say we're the the leaders in the country, full crew wise today we've got myself TCM in the front

03:07 seat, two paramedics and a doctor so we are at the end of the game really. I've got so many memories

03:13 being in the charity, one of the big ones is landing here at Nostal Priory, it was the first

03:17 pilot to land in here when we moved from Leeds Bradford airport into here, that was different,

03:21 you could see around here it's completely changed but that was a an highlight I think,

03:26 moving the first aircraft into here. It's amazing what the fundraisers and the charity do,

03:31 getting the money in and the general public, how they donate it, I don't know how they do it really,

03:36 it's a great achievement and we won't be here unless it was the general public donating.

03:41 so

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