Working as a pilot with the Flying Doctors is more than just a job...
It is a commitment to helping people in remote and regional Australia.
More important than the number of hours flown is the pilot’s ability to communicate sensitively with patients and their families in emergencies and often tragic situations.
It is also essential that our pilots have highly developed technical skills to manage the difficult and varying conditions often encountered in emergency aerial evacuations. Difficult take-off and landing conditions often need to be negotiated. Our pilots must know how to land at night on unsealed strips (lit only by flares and populated by kangaroos), or on a dirt road next to a motor vehicle accident with only a car’s headlights to guide them. Injuries sustained by the patient must be taken into account when preparing a flight plan. If a patient has sustained head or eye injuries, for example, then the plane must be flown lower than usual (to ‘sea level cabin’) and the subsequent effect on fuel must be taken into account.
Each year, hundreds of aspiring pilots apply for a position in the Royal Flying Doctor Service, but it takes a special kind of person to do this job and only a few make the grade. Fierce competition for these positions means that our pilots are among the best aeromedical pilots in the world.