We had limited open-source information on this incident, particularly regarding the flight path. As a result, the animation and audio recording might not perfectly align with the aircraft's position. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed covering this story. Amidst the frequent aircraft crashes and accidents that this channel covers, this positive outcome is a beacon of hope. We hope it brings joy and inspiration to all of us. Please share this video with your friends and family. Wishing you a Happy New Year, -The Flight Follower Team
I was an EMT on a children’s hospital transport team for many years and currently in flight school. This was so cool to hear the worlds combine. Sure they both speak english but ATC and critical medical care are wildly different languages.
They both do a vital job, and I think the pilots and ATC did a fantastic job of conveying some very foreign-to-them information between the two medical teams. No game of telephone here. However it turned out, they all gave that kid the very best chance they possibly could.
Experts in their respective fields but having to learn each others' language while on the fly and each professional is working to perform a miracle 🙏 It's like walking into a different world on hard mode at step one.
This is hands down the most harrowing comms I have ever heard. You can hear the desperation in the pilots voice, the utter hope that this all. Just. Works. What a phenomenal example of professionalism by all.
Understanding medical terminology and values interpreted through the aviation terms and phonetic alphabet is not a combination I thought I’d ever hear but a clever way to communicate to experts.
When it comes down to it, pilots and ATC already know how to convey numbers and letters to one another. They just had some really unfamiliar numbers and letters to work with this time. They absolutely gave that child the very best chance they possibly could.
All this reminds me of is how crazy the world is. How some people are trying so hard to save one life, while others are trying to kill as many as possible.
All involved did a great job at clearly communicating what probably seemed like gibberish. I’d take a patient report or doc orders from these guys any day of the week. Wish there’d been a more direct way to pass info, but the aviation industry’s dedication to calm and precise communication, with a built in system of verifying info, was the perfect middleman. Hats off to everyone in this tense situation.
@@AN-12345the child was receiving lifesaving intensive care so no doubt the medics were working very hard. The vitals reported were quite grim. The fact that they did reach out to the hospital for further advice shows that.
Mad props to ATC for being a go-between into the wild world of urgent medical care. I'm surprised ATC didn't have them to declare an emergency with CPR in progress.
There is only a small difference between handling of lifeguard and emergency, I'm sure they pushed the lifeguard to same handling as an emergency but no need to declare it.
@reynirheidbergstefansson2343 List of priority...Emergency aircraft, Lifeguard, Search and rescue, Air Force 1, a variety national defense military missions, flight check, Routine IFR, routine VFR.
Humanity at its best! Talking lang they have no clue of with such precision and oh the patience… Bravo is right!!!!! Testament to you two gentleman for sure! The lifeline and doctor too! Ty for allowing us to witness such great hope! ❤
Pilot: I need you guys to contact the hospital for us. ATC: the hospital? What is it? Pilot: it’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.
Even in 2009, there were companies like STAT MD and Medlink that airlines used for crews to call over the radio or satcom when they needed the assistance of a physician. Im surprised this lifeguard flight didnt have that or something similar.
I absolutely commend the pilot and ATC for their teamwork in an extremely critical situation. However, having to relay blood gas data via 2 non-medically trained personnel (I'm guessing due to technological restraints in 2009?) took way too much precious time that that baby did not have. At a pH of 7.13 with CPR being performed on the child, having to communicate all that data to ATC just for the doctor at the other end of the line to tell them to 'turn up the oxygen' (FiO2 100%) was probably not the very efficient... However, I understand that in such a desperate situation, as the flight crew, your back is against the wall and I would not want to be put into that situation. I guess we can be grateful that technology has advanced in the meantime.
Geez.. In these cases, if for whatever reason the ambulance is delayed or whatever, get a local police unit or airport police officer to drive the patient code-3 to the hospital. Done that a bunch of times. And other police units can block intersections for a speedy trip. We call em scoop and runs. Paramedics don't like that too much but in a dire situation, it's go time.
Family members worked military ambulances for years in the UK, 'scoop and run' in some instances is vital. Other extremely critical patients were 5 miles an hour, sometimes 10, traffic cleared, no vehicles passing, stay off painted lines/cats eyes/metal drains and lids. They were the most exhausting and nerve-wracking journey's.
Great job by all. But hooly dooly. Poor ATC probably said boss im knocking off. I need a drink after that. All that medical jaragon. Pilot probably landed and just put his head in his hands once baby transferred. Flight nurses are use to being in this form of crisis. Calm and focussed.
This ATC was probably having a calm day and had settled in with a coffee......and then.......kapow! "Ok....what was the BeN and PC 0302 and the PH of the what again?"
My thoughts exactly. That flight likely had a flight nurse and paramedic on board with the patient, so the care team was relaying info to the pilot to relay to ATC to relay to medical control which then gave orders to ATC to give to the pilot to give to the care team. That's too much telephone when a life's on the line. But, I get it: They couldn't get in touch with medical control through ordinary means and were in a dire situation involving an infant with a horrible blood pressure & O2 saturation on whom CPR was being performed.
So much confusion about the units... The medics should have written “IV dose epinephrine 0.2” or something like that.. A doctor should know that the specified dose for continuous intravenous infusions is given in (µg/kg/min). Micrograms (drug mass) per Kilograms (patients' body mass/weight) per minute.
I mean, the medics seemed like they had their hands full (one doing CPR while the other's doing everything else) so they probably just shouted the drug names/dosages to the front. But, taking an extra minute to write "20kg child; HR 161; BP 21/18; SPO2 88%; 2 mcg/kg/min dopamine; 0.2 mcg/kg/min epi" on a piece of 3" tape and passing that to the pilot would've worked in a pinch. Better still would be training both the pilots & care team on what to do if, Lord forbid, the pilot ever needs to relay medical information through ATC on behalf of the care team.
This was perplexing to me, because if this is a Medical flight, aren't they prepared for these types of medical Problems? Not sure why they need to call for Instructions. Anyone?
Possible solution: the medical personnel onboard were medical flight nurses, not doctors. They may have encountered a situation with this patient where they needed a doctor's input/recommendation. Maybe it's similar to mechanical issues on an aircraft; if there's a mechanical issue outside the breadth of their knowledge, they contact company and are put in touch with a mechanic on the ground. But that's just my best guess.
@@Elisevetter yeah, im assuming so as well. Very unusual to call a Doc though. Must have been a super dooper unusual case. Kindof like Rampart Squad 51! lolz..
Former paramedic here: Usually, air ambulances crews include a doctor, but often, it's just a flight nurse and maybe a paramedic. Nurses and paramedics aren't licensed to practice medicine; unless they're a nurse practitioner, they practice under a doctor's supervision and license. Accordingly, nurses and paramedics often need to call medical control to receive orders from a doctor when the situation's particularly complicated or when their standing orders are insufficient to treat the patient. This was just about the worst thing that could happen in the back of an air ambulance that didn't involve the plane itself, by the way. When your patient is a very sick infant circling the drain at 40,000 feet and you can't contact medical control normally, yeah, I can totally understand asking ATC for assistance. For context, this situation is analogous to a pilot asking a non-pilot passenger to ask another non-pilot passenger to call ATC to let them know the pilot's declaring an emergency & needs vectors to the nearest airfield & then relaying the instructions back to the pilot. Knowing how screwed up that would get, try to imagine what it'd be like if you're now communicating drug names and dosages measured in micrograms per kilogram of body weight per minute that need to be administered to a baby in critical condition.
Why not just call the hospital and say 'Get a peads doc on the line to listen to this for an emergency' or record it and call the hospital and play it down the line? Props to pilots and ATC for doing what they did, but surely having a doctor directly in the loop would be the best option? Edit: NVM Just noticed the date. I thought this was recent.
I wonder if there is a part 2 with the landing. Did this aircraft got emergency status on landing with priority? I wonder if they couldn't put the doctor from the external phone line directly on the frequency to communicate. It need some timing as one can speak at a time of but it will make communication of information much more efficient instead of having all details above ATC's head...
You're asking stuff that's not making sense. The aircraft, .edevac flight already has priority. Also, a doctor at the hospital has no way to get on an ATC frequency to the aircraft. They should've had a Sat. phone on the aircraft!!!
Cell phones don't work at altitude because the cell network antennas on the ground only broadcast in directions that hit the ground, and not aimlessly into the sky. Also, from the video, it seems that they were above the ocean. So even if the antennas would work differently than they do, there wouldn't have been any around.
Vital time wasted by not getting the physician or other medical provider on the line ASAP. If this happened again it would be better to get someone on speakerphone if you can’t patch them in directly. You need contextual understanding to take that information down correctly and quickly. ATC could verify numbers are read back correctly with the doc on speakerphone. A baby in that scenario has minutes to spare.
@@SuperMrpeepers Eh, this seemed to be a bit different from a normal code. Anyone trained in ACLS and PALS can run a normal code. But, this kid was being lifeflighted to a children's hospital in Miami, so there's obviously a lot more going on. A 21/18 blood pressure + 0.9 mmol/L calcium + 7.13 arterial blood pH is extremely, extremely critical
@@kmore2785 Agreed. They were doing everything under standing orders and this little creature, undergoing CPR at 40,000 feet, was failing fast. They are practicing within their scope of practice, no doc on board, they can't just make up some medical orders and proceed. Glad it succeeded, good life little one, now 16 y.o. if fair winds followed.
1) the pilot should have declared an emergency. 2) why were the controllers and pilots translating? the doctors should have been talking directly. 3) why doesn't a Lifeflight have a Sat radio so the doctors could talk directly, so the pilot could fly the plane?
We had limited open-source information on this incident, particularly regarding the flight path. As a result, the animation and audio recording might not perfectly align with the aircraft's position. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed covering this story.
Amidst the frequent aircraft crashes and accidents that this channel covers, this positive outcome is a beacon of hope. We hope it brings joy and inspiration to all of us.
Please share this video with your friends and family.
Wishing you a Happy New Year,
-The Flight Follower Team
We now just hope for the infant recovery🙏🤞
The ATC, Miami Children's and the flight crew had it together. Excellent teamwork to save the baby. Awesome.
I was an EMT on a children’s hospital transport team for many years and currently in flight school. This was so cool to hear the worlds combine. Sure they both speak english but ATC and critical medical care are wildly different languages.
They both do a vital job, and I think the pilots and ATC did a fantastic job of conveying some very foreign-to-them information between the two medical teams. No game of telephone here. However it turned out, they all gave that kid the very best chance they possibly could.
Experts in their respective fields but having to learn each others' language while on the fly and each professional is working to perform a miracle 🙏 It's like walking into a different world on hard mode at step one.
This is hands down the most harrowing comms I have ever heard. You can hear the desperation in the pilots voice, the utter hope that this all. Just. Works. What a phenomenal example of professionalism by all.
Understanding medical terminology and values interpreted through the aviation terms and phonetic alphabet is not a combination I thought I’d ever hear but a clever way to communicate to experts.
When it comes down to it, pilots and ATC already know how to convey numbers and letters to one another. They just had some really unfamiliar numbers and letters to work with this time. They absolutely gave that child the very best chance they possibly could.
Thank you for including in your description that the child lived. I'm hoping they're a happy, healthy teenager driving their parents crazy.
All this reminds me of is how crazy the world is. How some people are trying so hard to save one life, while others are trying to kill as many as possible.
Irony
Too true. Unfortunately.
How true! Sadly!
All involved did a great job at clearly communicating what probably seemed like gibberish. I’d take a patient report or doc orders from these guys any day of the week. Wish there’d been a more direct way to pass info, but the aviation industry’s dedication to calm and precise communication, with a built in system of verifying info, was the perfect middleman. Hats off to everyone in this tense situation.
The babies are always the hardest ones as an air ambulance pilot. We did a lot for miami children hospital out of OPF and TMB from the islands
Impressive job by the whole team! Congratulations! Hope the kid is without permanent damage.
I’m a current Medevac in LA.. and this still gives me the chills. So others may live.. well done crew
Thank you for being a Medivac..
That's amazing :)! CPR in a hospital can look chaotic but doing it in a plane with less staff is quite something.
Hope the child made a full recovery.
The callsign Lifeguard indicates it is a Medevac flight, so at least they have the equipment and training!
@@AN-12345the child was receiving lifesaving intensive care so no doubt the medics were working very hard. The vitals reported were quite grim.
The fact that they did reach out to the hospital for further advice shows that.
Wow! Watching from across the world, I am very impressed. Great job by the whole (extended) team. Thank you!
I bet that controller will never get impatient when a pilot messes up reading back a complex departure clearance again
Mad props to ATC for being a go-between into the wild world of urgent medical care. I'm surprised ATC didn't have them to declare an emergency with CPR in progress.
There is only a small difference between handling of lifeguard and emergency, I'm sure they pushed the lifeguard to same handling as an emergency but no need to declare it.
FAA country has only Routine and Emergency, and this wasn't Routine.
@reynirheidbergstefansson2343 List of priority...Emergency aircraft, Lifeguard, Search and rescue, Air Force 1, a variety national defense military missions, flight check, Routine IFR, routine VFR.
Wish we knew how everything turned out because this baby could be 16 now living their best life. That's, perhaps, the most beautiful part of this.
The posted note indicates the infant's life was saved, so (s)he should be getting a driver's permit by now. 😊🚙
I use to fly Air Ambulance was always Something crew did a great job
Humanity at its best! Talking lang they have no clue of with such precision and oh the patience…
Bravo is right!!!!!
Testament to you two gentleman for sure!
The lifeline and doctor too!
Ty for allowing us to witness such great hope!
❤
Pilot: I need you guys to contact the hospital for us.
ATC: the hospital? What is it?
Pilot: it’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.
Shirley you can't be serious!
@@deekamikazedon’t call me Shirley
😂
This is right up my alley, been a medic for years.
Great job ATC!
Great teamwork by everyone involved, especially the ATC. Happy New Year to all.
Best example of CRM I’ve ever seen.
Crazy how this worked out.
Even in 2009, there were companies like STAT MD and Medlink that airlines used for crews to call over the radio or satcom when they needed the assistance of a physician. Im surprised this lifeguard flight didnt have that or something similar.
At :58 they say nobody is responding to them on flight service - which would be the patch you're referencing.
I absolutely commend the pilot and ATC for their teamwork in an extremely critical situation. However, having to relay blood gas data via 2 non-medically trained personnel (I'm guessing due to technological restraints in 2009?) took way too much precious time that that baby did not have. At a pH of 7.13 with CPR being performed on the child, having to communicate all that data to ATC just for the doctor at the other end of the line to tell them to 'turn up the oxygen' (FiO2 100%) was probably not the very efficient... However, I understand that in such a desperate situation, as the flight crew, your back is against the wall and I would not want to be put into that situation. I guess we can be grateful that technology has advanced in the meantime.
Geez.. In these cases, if for whatever reason the ambulance is delayed or whatever, get a local police unit or airport police officer to drive the patient code-3 to the hospital. Done that a bunch of times. And other police units can block intersections for a speedy trip. We call em scoop and runs. Paramedics don't like that too much but in a dire situation, it's go time.
Babies hooked up to a lot of things. I get what you're saying but the babies hooked to IV, oxygen, monitors, etc.
@@nicolasramos421 exactly, and with CPR in progress. Baby and all its equipment and medics are not gonna fit in a police car.
Family members worked military ambulances for years in the UK, 'scoop and run' in some instances is vital.
Other extremely critical patients were 5 miles an hour, sometimes 10, traffic cleared, no vehicles passing, stay off painted lines/cats eyes/metal drains and lids. They were the most exhausting and nerve-wracking journey's.
Solid work!
God bless all involved!!!
Great job by all. But hooly dooly. Poor ATC probably said boss im knocking off. I need a drink after that. All that medical jaragon. Pilot probably landed and just put his head in his hands once baby transferred. Flight nurses are use to being in this form of crisis. Calm and focussed.
This ATC was probably having a calm day and had settled in with a coffee......and then.......kapow! "Ok....what was the BeN and PC 0302 and the PH of the what again?"
Is there no way they could have spoken directly Dr to Dr. Would have been much more effective than relaying messages and less risk of error
Thats what I was wondering.. for that the doctor had to remain present in the control tower.. pretty sure doctors don’t use satellite phones as well
@@Flight_Followercontroller could have put his speaker phone on full volume and held his radio mic beside it.
An HF patch through ARINC would have been possible, hence the question about if the aircraft had an HF radio.
This was in 2009. Things have evolved greatly since.
I wonder if they use Starlink now?
This was a great story, but it might be time to get the LifeFlight a sat-phone.
Well they definitely should’ve made them talk on HF frequency so that they can do Phone Patch and speak directly to doctors
My thoughts exactly. That flight likely had a flight nurse and paramedic on board with the patient, so the care team was relaying info to the pilot to relay to ATC to relay to medical control which then gave orders to ATC to give to the pilot to give to the care team. That's too much telephone when a life's on the line. But, I get it: They couldn't get in touch with medical control through ordinary means and were in a dire situation involving an infant with a horrible blood pressure & O2 saturation on whom CPR was being performed.
@@kmore2785 that is excly why you hear act ask for a repeat of the info if things are missed
Who ever was the pilot, man this guy deserve some holidays. Well done. But too slow to transfer the information.
So much confusion about the units... The medics should have written “IV dose epinephrine 0.2” or something like that.. A doctor should know that the specified dose for continuous intravenous infusions is given in (µg/kg/min). Micrograms (drug mass) per Kilograms (patients' body mass/weight) per minute.
I mean, the medics seemed like they had their hands full (one doing CPR while the other's doing everything else) so they probably just shouted the drug names/dosages to the front. But, taking an extra minute to write "20kg child; HR 161; BP 21/18; SPO2 88%; 2 mcg/kg/min dopamine; 0.2 mcg/kg/min epi" on a piece of 3" tape and passing that to the pilot would've worked in a pinch. Better still would be training both the pilots & care team on what to do if, Lord forbid, the pilot ever needs to relay medical information through ATC on behalf of the care team.
Why wouldn't the Atc just record the information and play back for the doctor?
this controller was doing the best he could being totally unfamiliar with the situation and terms being relayed.
This was perplexing to me, because if this is a Medical flight, aren't they prepared for these types of medical Problems? Not sure why they need to call for Instructions. Anyone?
Possible solution: the medical personnel onboard were medical flight nurses, not doctors. They may have encountered a situation with this patient where they needed a doctor's input/recommendation. Maybe it's similar to mechanical issues on an aircraft; if there's a mechanical issue outside the breadth of their knowledge, they contact company and are put in touch with a mechanic on the ground. But that's just my best guess.
@@Elisevetter yeah, im assuming so as well. Very unusual to call a Doc though. Must have been a super dooper unusual case. Kindof like Rampart Squad 51! lolz..
Former paramedic here: Usually, air ambulances crews include a doctor, but often, it's just a flight nurse and maybe a paramedic. Nurses and paramedics aren't licensed to practice medicine; unless they're a nurse practitioner, they practice under a doctor's supervision and license. Accordingly, nurses and paramedics often need to call medical control to receive orders from a doctor when the situation's particularly complicated or when their standing orders are insufficient to treat the patient. This was just about the worst thing that could happen in the back of an air ambulance that didn't involve the plane itself, by the way. When your patient is a very sick infant circling the drain at 40,000 feet and you can't contact medical control normally, yeah, I can totally understand asking ATC for assistance.
For context, this situation is analogous to a pilot asking a non-pilot passenger to ask another non-pilot passenger to call ATC to let them know the pilot's declaring an emergency & needs vectors to the nearest airfield & then relaying the instructions back to the pilot. Knowing how screwed up that would get, try to imagine what it'd be like if you're now communicating drug names and dosages measured in micrograms per kilogram of body weight per minute that need to be administered to a baby in critical condition.
@@kmore2785 They should've just called Dr Gannon at Rampart!
Why not just call the hospital and say 'Get a peads doc on the line to listen to this for an emergency' or record it and call the hospital and play it down the line? Props to pilots and ATC for doing what they did, but surely having a doctor directly in the loop would be the best option?
Edit: NVM Just noticed the date. I thought this was recent.
Why didn’t they land in Puerto Rico?
I wonder if there is a part 2 with the landing. Did this aircraft got emergency status on landing with priority? I wonder if they couldn't put the doctor from the external phone line directly on the frequency to communicate. It need some timing as one can speak at a time of but it will make communication of information much more efficient instead of having all details above ATC's head...
You're asking stuff that's not making sense.
The aircraft, .edevac flight already has priority.
Also, a doctor at the hospital has no way to get on an ATC frequency to the aircraft.
They should've had a Sat. phone on the aircraft!!!
FA Nephrine = epinephrine aka the medicine inside Epi pens
I wonder why it's not possible to text the info, maybe cell phones don't work in that region or when over water.
Cell phones don't work at altitude because the cell network antennas on the ground only broadcast in directions that hit the ground, and not aimlessly into the sky.
Also, from the video, it seems that they were above the ocean. So even if the antennas would work differently than they do, there wouldn't have been any around.
2009?
Yes sir
@@Flight_Followerand whatever happened later, to the baby?
Just record what he says and play for the Dr.
So who was flying the plane??
It appears that one Pilot was flying the airplane, period, and the other Pilot was doing the medical communications. Well done.
Na & Ka?
Sodium and Potassium.
K not Ka..potassium
*epinephrine = adrenaline
Thank you
Good job by everyone on the radio.
The transcriptions opn this channel are terrible.
Vital time wasted by not getting the physician or other medical provider on the line ASAP. If this happened again it would be better to get someone on speakerphone if you can’t patch them in directly. You need contextual understanding to take that information down correctly and quickly. ATC could verify numbers are read back correctly with the doc on speakerphone. A baby in that scenario has minutes to spare.
that medical team should be able to run a code. without assistance from a doctor-just saying
@@SuperMrpeepers Eh, this seemed to be a bit different from a normal code. Anyone trained in ACLS and PALS can run a normal code. But, this kid was being lifeflighted to a children's hospital in Miami, so there's obviously a lot more going on. A 21/18 blood pressure + 0.9 mmol/L calcium + 7.13 arterial blood pH is extremely, extremely critical
@@kmore2785 Agreed. They were doing everything under standing orders and this little creature, undergoing CPR at 40,000 feet, was failing fast. They are practicing within their scope of practice, no doc on board, they can't just make up some medical orders and proceed. Glad it succeeded, good life little one, now 16 y.o. if fair winds followed.
1) the pilot should have declared an emergency.
2) why were the controllers and pilots translating? the doctors should have been talking directly.
3) why doesn't a Lifeflight have a Sat radio so the doctors could talk directly, so the pilot could fly the plane?
It was 2009 on an old Lear, things have probably changed by now.
air ambulance flights are already given priority over other aircraft.
@@ericrogers2036 declare an emergency and do what?
That’s way above normal peoples ability to copy and repeat!
I'm all tearful emotion and no words, thank you
🥹 🥲 🥰