Riding skies to the rescue

From Hernando, Jet ICU air ambulances are ready to go practically anywhere.

By Tom Marshall, Times Staff Writer
Published February 12, 2008

The jets travel at more than 500 mph, with cabin seating for four and a patient stretcher.
	[Ron Thompson | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Ron Thompson | Times] Brian Fanning, head of maintenance for Jet ICU, walks near one of two Learjets the company owns. He was working Friday afternoon on the jet's hydraulics.

BROOKSVILLE - Bart Gray was too busy to talk last week.

On Wednesday, he was repatriating an injured undocumented resident from Salt Lake City to Peru. By Friday, he was whisking a hurt motorcyclist from Argentina to a hospital in Boston. This week - well, it's hard to say where Gray might be this week.

If you fall sick while cruising the Caribbean or traversing the Sahara - or need a new liver or a quick ride to the Mayo Clinic - it might be Gray's company that comes to the rescue.

Since August, Jet ICU Air Ambulance Service has been operating out of the Hernando County Airport with four Learjets and an onsite medical team. Aside from the polar ice caps, they fly from Brooksville to anywhere.

"The work is all randomness, unscheduled," said flight doctor Hillard Chemers. "We get a call, we go."

Founded in 2003, Jet ICU was previously based at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. But the company's expansion plans were "stifled" by obstacles and a shortage of land, said co-owner Mike Honeycutt.

In Hernando, airport officials encouraged the company's plans to build a 23,000-square-foot hangar to house its four Learjets, as well as a remote fuel farm to save money on aviation fuel costs. A final decision on a construction permit for the hangar is expected next month.

"They welcomed us with open arms," Honeycutt said.

Most of the staff met while working for other air evacuation companies, and all enjoy the fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment. It's a job that calls upon all of one's skills, usually all at once.

Take Patricia Fishman. Before she began working for Jet ICU as a dispatcher, bookkeeper and operations specialist, she flew helicopters. And worked as a hospital respiratory technician. And dispatched planes for Continental Airlines.

Now she wouldn't work anywhere else.

Unlike many air ambulance companies, Jet ICU is licensed by the Florida Department of Public Health and maintains its own medical staff and equipment. It's always looking for good nurses or emergency medical technicians willing to be on call and to jet off to the edge of the world on short notice.

Their jobs take them from sunny Florida to parched desert or windswept tundra. And once they've got their patient, they keep him alive at 41,000 feet for hours on end in the cramped confines of a Learjet.

Within the past two months, one Jet ICU flight ferried a succession of patients right around the world. From Brooksville to its first stop in Denmark, the flight went to England; Kiev, Ukraine; Kazakhstan; China; and Manila, Philippines. Then it was on to South Korea and back to the United States.

"We just evacuated a missionary from Togo to Ypsilanti," Honeycutt recalled.

Many flights are paid for with health or travelers' insurance, he said. Others get funded from an unlucky traveler's credit card or an institution.

Honeycutt said last week's Salt Lake City-to-Peru run wasn't that unusual. An undocumented immigrant was seriously injured, and the hospital was paying his bills, Honeycutt said. Jetting the man back to his native land made more economic sense than sending him to another facility to recover.

Costs vary depending on the length of the flight and medical needs. But an average flight from South Florida to New England costs between $8,000 and $15,000, Honeycutt said. Once there, the company does its best to find a paying passenger - or several in succession - to pay for the trip back.

That can make for some once-in-a-lifetime itineraries.

One Venezuelan patient needed transport to Manila but feared being stranded in the United States en route and having to pay exorbitant American health care costs. So the plane took the southern route, following 18th century explorer Capt. James Cook's route via Easter Island, Tahiti, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Working for another company, Honeycutt once arrived in a Latin American city to find a newly ousted dictator for a passenger. The former ruler wasn't sick, but he worried his health might take a sudden turn for the worse if he didn't leave soon.

"He said 'Take me to Panama,'" Honeycutt recalled. "They didn't want him. He was worried about terminal bullets."

But mostly, it's run-of-the-mill lifesaving. The work is highly addictive, even for staffers who never leave the ground. "I have found my home," said Fishman, the dispatcher. "I won't leave until I'm old and gray."

Tom Marshall can be reached at tmarshall@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1431.

[Last modified February 11, 2008, 21:54:13]