STARS to buy new fleet with help from $65M in federal budget

Tuesday's federal budget includeda one-time payment of $65 million to Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service (STARS) for thepurchase of new emergency ambulance helicopters.

STARSis a non-profit organization that provides air ambulance services to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and parts of British Columbia. STARS says these services are especially important to rural and Indigenous communities in the prairies.

• STARS begins fleet replacement in Alberta with $13M in funding from province

Mike Lamacchia, vice-president of operations for STARS,saidthere is nothing wrong with the service's current helicopters,but that one of their models has been deemed a legacy aircraft, making future maintenance difficult and costly.

"The parts will become an issue which will then become a service ability and availability issue," Lamacchia said, "We started our capital and our journey fleet renewal program over a year ago because we knew this was coming."

STARS will need nine new emergency ambulance helicopters: five for Alberta, three for Saskatchewan and one for Manitoba.

Lamacchia says the $65 million included in the federal budget is enough to purchase five STARS helicopters for emergency ambulance use.

"Each one of them costs roughly $13 million," he said.

He said the current fleet will be soldto help pay for the other new helicopters.

From two separate models to one

LamacchiasaidSTARS islooking to standardize its fleet and move from having from two models, the BK117 and the AW139, to one model, the Airbus H145 aircraft. He says this will make it easier for training purposes and make maintenance easier.

"It's really important to have a unified fleet," Lamacchia said, "And for the pilots, that obviously fly the aircraft, to havestandardised cockpits so they're not going from one type to another type."

Lamacchia said he is excited for the money, but STARS will still need to raise around $10.5 million annually to continue operation.