The medivac helicopter, now housed in Myrtle Beach, prepares for a takeoff Tuesday afternoon.

By Betty Moses The Herald Myrtle Beach—

Dropping down out of a night sky in a helicopter onto a rural road, or into a field to pick up a seriously injured accident victim, takes a lot of piloting skill, good ground observations and a lot of courage. Patrick Walters is just such a helicopter pilot. He and his associates with the Omniflight company, which is located at the Myrtle Beach International Airport fire and rescue site, are responsible for getting hundreds of accident victims to trauma centers every year.

 Omniflight is a national medical transportation company that operates in more than 30 states. Walters and his crew average at least one flight a day. Sometimes multiple flights are necessary in bad accidents. There are no level one or level two trauma centers on the Grand Strand, so seriously injured victims are usually picked up from accident scenes in the area and flown to either the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, to Florence, or to the New Hanover Hospital center in Wilmington, N.C.

 The addition of a new Eurocopter AS 350 to the Myrtle Beach rescue center means Walters, who is base manager, and his associates can get to the scene faster. More space is provided for a flight nurse, a flight paramedic, and a patient who is usually on a gurney or stretcher along with emergency medical equipment. The new Eurocopter was used for the first time on a patient transfer mission on Monday night when a patient was transferred from Conway Hospital to MUSC in Charleston.

The aircraft normally can carry five or six passengers in addition to the pilot, particularly when it is used for such things as sightseeing and real estate surveying. Anyone familiar with helicopters knows that the older Bell helicopters — including the 206 — were at one time the industry standard. They are still being used, but they are not as big and fast as the Eurocopter. Nonetheless, Walters says there is always a market for a used helicopter because the demand for them far outstrips the supply in this country at the present time. Much of the demand is coming from the oil industry which uses them like taxicabs between land bases and offshore rigs. Also, there is a rapidly increasing demand for them in the medical evacuation and transportation business.

Although the Eurocopter was designed in Europe under the huge Aerospatiale wing, the AS350 is now manufactured in the United States under the name American Eurocopter. It has a headquarters operation in Grand Prairie, Texas, and a manufacturing center in Columbus, Miss. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the giant EADS corporation which owns everything from the unit that manufactures the European Air Bus passenger aircraft to the Arianne launch vehicle that is used to put satellites into orbit.

The AS350 is the workhorse of the Eurocopter fleet and is used by police, medical units and the media. There is a pretty good chance that many of the TV helicopters seen following high-speed police chases in places like Los Angeles are Eurocopter AS350s.

Other Eurocopter model helicopters are used for everything from police work to military attacks.

Omniflight has been operating out of the Grand Strand for two-and-a-half years. It actually started at the Conway Airport and then moved to the Air Force Base side of the Myrtle Beach International Airport. Walters has been with the operation ever since it started here. That happened to be on Sept 11, 2005, the fourth anniversary of the infamous 9/11 attacks.