Information
This aircraft was constructed back in 1991, and it was soon registered
N161BC in the US. The helicopter flew for the Sheriff department in Florida for a while but was soon sold and entered service with STAT MedEvac as
N915ME in June 1995.
It was known as “STAT 6” and operated out of at Clarion Hospital, north-east of Pittsburgh, in Pensylvania US. The helicopter, which was staffed with a pilot, a flight nurse and a flight paramedic, was quite busy. It made 713 inter-hospital transports and 116 local EMS missions in 1999.
In 2005 the local county council of Jämtland in Sweden decided to prolong its existing HEMS activity and sign a new contract with a helicopter operator. Lufttransport currently operated an Aérospatiale SA 365 N in the county, but the contract would expire in December the same year.
The competition for the new contract was won by Lufttransport and signed from January 1st 2006. It enclosed the five forthcoming years (plus two more on option) but required a more powerful helicopter than the existing SA 365 N (
SE-JCK) that had been used since 1996. The search for a new N2 version of the Dauphin was initiated and while preparing the new aircraft a provisional N2 (
LN-OLL) entered service in Jämtland.
The new aircraft was found in the US, where it was operated by STAT MedEvac. The American
N915ME was about to be replaced and Lufttransport was looking for a new one. It was a perfect match. The helicopter was shipped to Gothenburg in Sweden in early November and flown to Stockholm, where it went through an extensive EMS adaptation process at Bromma Air Maintenance (BAM) during the next 4-5 months. It made a short visit to Norrköping in order to get a new external livery during that time. The machine was painted in the new standard European EMS colours - yellow and green.
The helicopter was approved by the Swedish Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) on April 5th and left Stockholm for its new base in Östersund in the afternoon the next day. It entered service as “Lufttransport 994” in Jämtland in the second week of April – proudly replacing the provisional N2 Dauphin.
The new aircraft features a NVG configured single-pilot-IFR cockpit with a highly modern moving map display attached to the ambulance dispatcher system. The rear cabin is accessed by two sliding doors and houses a specially adapted emergency room with room for one stretcher bound patient in the standard operational configuration. The aircraft has an SX-16 searchlight implanted in the tail cone and has an extended range of external lighting – e.g. main rotor illumination and sidelong area lights.
The unit flies out of its base in downtown Östersund and takes off on approx 850 to 900 emergency calls annually. It carries a central crew of three – one pilot, one anaesthetic nurse and one “HEMS crew”. The team is joined by additional speciality expertises on certain complicated missions.
On 30 November 2016 Scandinavian MediCopter changed its name to
Babcock Scandinavian AirAmbulance (BSAA) as part of a global branding synchronization with the owner Babcock International Group. The new profile included a new logotype, but the operation and the structure of the company remained the same.
On 12 January 2018
SE-JIC was formally replaced by the brand-new Leonardo AW169
SE-JRA. The new aircraft was part of a huge investment to renew the EMS helicopter fleet in northern Sweden.
SE-JRA completed its first mission the next day, and
SE-JIC was retired for good.
It went through an overhaul at BSAA's maintenance base in Östersund, after which it left for Germany shortly thereafter. The helicopter, still registered
SE-JIC, was leased to a German Babcock company for operations in Africa. The helicopter left Sweden in February 2018.
A remarkable twist of fateThis aircraft was in fact a production sister with an earlier Swedish Dauphin named
SE-JAE. That aircraft was operated by Helikopter Service AB in the well-known shuttle traffic between Swedish Helsingborg and Kastrup airport in Denmark back in the 90's. However that machine was later sold to Spain. As an additional twist of fate
SE-JAE proves to be a sister to one of Lufttransport’s other EMS Dauphins (
SE-JIA) as well. The machines carries the construction numbers 6415 (JIA), 6416 (JAE) and 6417 (JIC).rnYet another Swedish Dauphin can be found only a couple of numbers away, 6419 (
SE-JFH).