Toll Ambulance Rescue Helicopter's fleet of Leonardo AW139 helicopters reached the 20,000 hour milestone in early July, four-and-a-half years after the service began.
During that time, the aircraft have collectively flown more than 10,000 missions at many challenging sites including roads, canyons, crevasses, rivers, oceans, cliffs and cruise ships.
Toll operates eight 139s with six on-line on any given day: three in Sydney and one each in Wollongong, Canberra and Orange. Toll estimates that 96% of the population of NSW is within one hour of the service, even in the most remote locations.
Colin Gunn, General Manager Toll Helicopters said “We are incredibly proud to operate this service with NSW Ambulance, ACT Ambulance and Newborn and Paediatric Emergency Transport service (NETS).
"With 120 Toll staff dedicated to the operation, it allows the service to provide exceptional medical care for the communities of NSW and ACT for the past four and a half years.
"The AW139 is able to balance the combination of speed, performance and payload to provide the most exceptional aeromedical platform available today.”
The Toll Ambulance Rescue Helicopter Service operates around the clock every day with a response time averaging less than 10 minutes in daylight and less than 20 minutes at night.
In 2020 alone, they were tasked to over 3000 missions involving everything from over-the-horizon search and rescue operations off the NSW Coast, to 250 winch operations in the mountainous regions.
Toll also operates a heavy maintenance base at Bankstown, through which the fleet is circulated, and an Advanced Centre of Excellence (ACE) used to train new crew and keep existing crew current on mission scenarios.