Metro Aviation recently delivered an EC145e to the Hartford Hospital LIFE STAR, a critical care service based in Hartford, Connecticut. The aircraft choice comes from its price and cabin space which allows it to conduct sanitary missions for which it will transport approximately 1,000 patients every year.
« It is important that we standardize our fleet and the EC145e is a great addition », said Dr. Lauri Bolton, Medical Director of the Hartford Hospital LIFE STAR before adding: « We wanted more space, system redundancy and modern workload reducers not available on our current aircraft. This new helicopter checks all those boxes for us. We’ll use the same stretcher between our new aircraft and our EC145, so that everything will work well together ». The new aircraft boasts great improvements over the current aircraft, based in Norwich. Besides a new air frame which should have a life cycle of more than 20 years, this model has a greater weight capacity to carry more fuel, transport the medical team and provide greater stretcher weight capacity. The aircraft also has a dual-axis autopilot to reduce pilot workload as well as an avionics system for weather reporting. The majority of LIFE STAR transport missions are inter-facility transfers within a 150-mile radius of its base of operation. The program has two bases in Connecticut and recently opened another base in Massachusetts.
