Airbus Super Puma AS332 helicopter drafted in to carry COVID-19 patients in northern Norway

In Norway, Super Puma helicopter operator Lufttransport reacted fast to an urgent request from Norwegian Air Ambulance Services (Luftambulansetjenesten) to provide a solution to the challenge of transporting COVID-19 victims to a hospital in the north of the country.

Luftambulansetjenesten, like other such services, has turned to the EpiShuttle isolation and transportation system from EpiGuard of Oslo to carry patients to hospital without risk of contamination of vehicles and staff. But the system is too big to use in the small fixed-wing aircraft operated on EMS flights from short runways in the north of Norway.

Lufttransport had an AS332 L1 Super Puma undergoing overhaul at the Stavanger facility of Heli One. Luftransport COO Kjetil Indrevik says: “In the north, we have 2 metres of snow and it is still snowing so this Super Puma was just what was needed. It wasn’t exactly in a thousand pieces but it needed a lot of work doing and Heli One did a great job in getting it ready and then we flew it to our base in Tromsø.”