Members from across the region gathered yesterday for the arrival ceremony of the plane and heard how it will assist seriously ill patients in north western NSW.

RFDS pilot for the Dubbo base Craig Nethery said yesterday’s event marked the start of a whole new era for the local RFDS.

“This aircraft is the first of two new aircrafts, we have traditionally operated here for the last ten years with one aircraft, an older Beechcraft King Air,” Mr Nethery said.

“This is a brand new Beechcraft King Air, virtually taken from the factory today and flown out here to Dubbo.”

Mr Nethery said the RFDS would have one new aircraft and one old one until the end of November.

He said while they don’t look much different on the exterior, the new one had a lot of advanced changes to its interior.

“On the inside as a pilot some of the key changes are in the cockpit,” he said.

“The new Beechcraft now has a glass cockpit, instead of having all round dials we have TV screens, that’s technology that’s used in the latest Boeings and Airbus aircraft.

“We have a more advanced navigation system, which allows us to track more accurately particularly in vertical navigation so we can actually program the aircraft and it will descend right down to the airport.

“The main changes however, are in the rear of the aircraft, the medical end.”

Mr Nethery said that as the NSW Ambulance service’s workload increases so does RFDS’s. The new aircraft would go a long way to improving services out west.

He said the new plane also allows for better medical services, making hospital transfers as safe as possible for the patient.

“In the last ten years when RFDS started in Dubbo we were basically used when required by the NSW Ambulance Service.

“What has happened now is we have become so integrated into the normal operations of the NSW Ambulance that we are called upon more, possibly due to the current shortage of doctors and medical staff in the country.

“What we are finding now particularly with this new generation of aircrafts is it is a mobile intensive care (unit).

“As soon as the patient comes on board they are receiving equivalent care to what they would be receiving at an intensive care unit in a hospital.

Mr Coulton was delighted with the arrival of the new aircraft and said it would go a long way in saving lives.

“For the service it provides for the people who live in the more remote parts of my electorate right out to Wilcannia, and for Dubbo it’s just another brick in the wall in building Dubbo into a major medical service centre for the west,” Mr Coulton said.

anna.yeo@ruralpress.com