The Ambulance Service

The Air Ambulance Service is a charity that delivers lifesaving care through two air ambulance services. It receives no government or National Lottery funding for its daily missions. The charity relies entirely on public donations to keep its crews ready to respond to emergencies.

Your Local Air Ambulance provides rapid emergency care across Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland. This service covers 3,850 square miles and includes Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance and Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland Air Ambulance. Since 2003, it has brought critical care at hospital level directly to people facing serious medical emergencies and trauma across the region.

The local crews respond to around ten emergency missions each day. They handle road traffic collisions, cardiac arrests, strokes, serious falls and industrial accidents. Helicopters fly at 185 miles per hour and carry specialist doctors, critical care paramedics and pilots. Critical Care Cars back up helicopter missions and operate a night car service. This ensures help is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The National Children's Air Ambulance is a UK wide service that transfers critically ill babies and children between hospitals. It works with 11 NHS paediatric retrieval teams across England, Scotland and Wales. The helicopters act as flying intensive care units with specially designed clinical equipment. They fly around four times faster than a land ambulance. When a child is too unwell to move, the service flies the clinical team directly to the bedside.

Each local air ambulance mission costs about £2,500. Each national children's mission costs about £5,700. In 2024, the local service flew 683 hours and completed 3,779 missions. The children's service flew 534 hours. The charity works toward a future where children grow up, adults live longer, and families stay together, because loss through sudden trauma should be rare.

Services

• Emergency helicopter response
• Critical Care Car service
• National children's air transfers
• Paediatric retrieval missions
• NHS clinical team transport
• Night car service
• Critical care at the scene
• Specialist incubator transfers