Garden City Helicopters

The Customer

Garden City Helicopters offers commercial and scenic flights, flight training and rescue services to customers in the Christchurch, Greymouth and Nelson/Marlborough area.

The scenic flight service covers the major tourist attractions in the Canterbury region and they can also arrange personalised flights to meet customers' needs.

Garden City Helicopters have been operating a rescue operation for 20 years. The helicopters are engaged continually on paramedic attendances and patient transfers from accident scenes, searching, water and mountain rescues, and inter hospital patient transfers.

The Challenge

Garden City Helicopters needed a communication system they could depend on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When you are dealing with peoples' lives there is no room for downtime.

Whether a pilot is taking a group of tourists on a scenic flight over the Canterbury peninsula or attending a life-threatening situation - reliable communications and first-class coverage are fundamental needs for Garden City Helicopters.

Without dependable communications the company would not be able to operate - it is an essential requirement.

The Solution

The mobile radios were installed into each helicopter, which enables the pilot and crew to communicate with the base or with emergency services depending on the service they are operating.

Some helicopters have a single head dual application installed - this means that two emergency services' networks can operate using one control head. This is desirable for the company as space in a helicopter is of a premium.

In an emergency situation having a dependable communication system in place allows the paramedics to call the emergency department in advance, so as to brief them with accurate information on the incoming patient's condition. This ensures the patient will get the best and fastest clinical care.