Behind the Scenes: How Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance Responds to Emergencies
Thursday, 20 November 2025
How does your air ambulance team decide when to deploy a helicopter versus a ground crew?
Our operations are coordinated by the HEMS (Helicopter Emergency Medical Service) desk in Exeter. Dispatchers monitor all 999 calls across the South West, identifying incidents where an air ambulance can make a real difference. They listen in on calls, call back for updates, and liaise with ambulance crews already on the scene of an emergency.
Sometimes, our aircrew are requested to respond directly by land ambulance or rapid response teams. This happens when patients need advanced skills, specialised medications, or urgent transfer to a Major Trauma Centre, where our helicopter can significantly reduce travel time.
In addition, our crew can self-task to an incident. Our paramedics are able to assess 999 incidents in the area as they are being logged by South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWAST)’s computer system and can also identify emergencies where we might be needed. The duty crew will still liaise with the HEMS desk to agree that we will attend an incident.
What areas or types of incidents does your service typically respond to most often?
Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance Charity’s dedicated aircrew, consisting of pilots, critical care paramedics and doctors, are operational up to 19 hours a day, all year round.
In 2024, our aircrew attended an average of four missions per day, reaching a record 1,343 missions – a 15% increase on the previous year.
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Cardiac emergencies: 326 callouts (roughly a quarter of all missions)
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Medical emergencies: 287
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Road traffic collisions: 190
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Sporting incidents: 72
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Assaults: 58
Our busiest areas included Swindon (243 missions), Bath (117), Chippenham (109) and Trowbridge (90).
You can explore our interactive mission map on the Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance website to see where we’ve been helping people in your community.
How do you coordinate with other emergency services such as police, coastguard, or mountain rescue teams?
Collaboration is key. We operate closely with police, fire crews, local ambulances, mountain rescue, and coastguard teams when necessary, who are all tasked in a similar way. In major incidents, multiple air ambulances may be deployed, and our pilots track all nearby emergency aircraft to safely coordinate operations.
We can see all emergency service assets through a programme we use on the aircraft; this helps us with deconfliction when operating around the areas.
We communicate with other aircraft using onboard radio systems or the TETRA encrypted network, ensuring smooth coordination and the fastest possible response times for patients.
What are the biggest logistical challenges you face when responding to calls in remote or hard-to-reach areas?
Wiltshire and Bath includes vast areas of rural terrain, including Salisbury Plain, Roundway, Marshfield and Pewsey Vale. These areas present unique challenges:
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Limited or unclear access points
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Obstacles such as livestock, fences, or wires
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Inaccurate street addresses, making it difficult for emergency crews to locate patients
These challenges can often delay the care the casualty requires in the early stages of an illness or accident.
To overcome this, we rely on What3Words, a simple system that converts precise locations into three easy-to-share words. The three words can be placed into the mapping system we use, and a route can instantly be created to the location given, exact to 3m by 3m square. This allows our crews to get to patients faster, saving valuable minutes in critical situations – because speed is our superpower.
Whether it’s coordinating with other emergency services or navigating challenging terrain, our goal is simple: to get patients the care they need, as quickly as possible. By understanding how we decide when to fly, what types of emergencies we attend, and how we navigate logistical challenges, we hope supporters can see the full picture of our lifesaving operations.
Every mission, every call, and every second counts – and it’s only thanks to our donors, volunteers, and the local community that our crew can continue to save lives across Wiltshire and Bath. It costs over £5 million a year to fund the essential lifesaving service we provide. If you'd like to support our work, please consider a donation below.