DHART gets final FAA OK for new instrument flight rules system

Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s medical helicopters can now fly more often and in more varied weather conditions, thanks to a first-of-its-kind private airspace navigation system developed by Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
The Federal Aviation Administration has approved the final phase of a low-level Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) plan that connects 30 hospitals around New Hampshire and Vermont and that allows the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team (DHART) choppers to fly in less-than-optimal weather conditions and through challenging terrain.
‘It’s the first system like it in the world,’said Frank Erdman, DHART’s program director, who led development of the IFR plan, which was developed and funded by Dartmouth-Hitchcock as the first fully integrated, private, low-level helicopter GPS route structure. Other medical flight operations ‘including Maine ‘have developed IFR approach capabilities into several hospitals, but the missing link has been connecting the routes between hospitals into an integrated system.
In its northern New England location, DHART faces significant weather and terrain-related challenges when responding to medical emergencies around the region. In the past, the helicopters were confined to flying only when they could meet strict standards for visibility. Low clouds, fog, rain and snow, and the region’s many mountains and valleys could prevent the medical choppers from reaching some patients.
Pilots must turn back or cancel a medical flight if visual conditions prevented safe takeoffs or landings, Erdman said. ‘If the weather was clear in Lebanon and we encountered fog in the Lakes Region, we’d have to abort the flight and head back home.’
‘This is an additional tool that gives us additional capabilities; it does not solve all problems,’he added. ‘There is such a thing as too little visibility to fly safely.’
Erdman, his DHART crew, the Metro Aviation pilots, and the engineering firm Hickok and Associates resolved the problem over the past six years by meticulously mapping the entire region using GPS technology and creating a series of routes for the pilots to follow, pre-designated flight patterns that can be navigated using instruments only ‘much like the routes that commercial airlines fly in and out of large airports in almost all weather conditions. The difference is that DHART’s helicopters are flying at low levels ‘no more than 3,200 feet ‘through the region’s valleys and plains. Commercial air traffic generally flies at altitudes of 30,000 feet.
This final phase of the project encompasses the entire two-state New Hampshire-Vermont region, connecting a total of 30 of the most-frequently visited hospitals that rely on Dartmouth-Hitchcock for critical care in emergencies. Two earlier phases of the IFR flying program ‘rolled out over the past 12 months ‘connected 20 hospitals.
The DHART flight program, with helicopters based at DHMC in Lebanon and at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, responds to about 1,500 flight requests per year through its Lebanon-based communications center. That’s an average of four flights per day, every day of the year for the nine contract pilots and 65 medical and communications personnel at the hospital. Erdman estimates that the IFR has the estimated capacity to add 150 flights per year. DHART began operations on July 1, 1994.
DHART’s new IFR capability has already added about 60 flights this year, which is past the break-even point for the hospital’s $600,000 investment in the IFR plan ‘meaning the project has already paid for itself.
‘We believe you’re always safer ‘pilots, patients, medics, and emergency personnel on the ground ‘if you meticulously preplan what you’re doing,’Erdman explained. ‘This is a huge, two-state, preplan on how we are going to get from point A to point B and how we are going to land safely at hospitals. The benefit is we’re going to be able to save more patients in critical care situations throughout the region.’