Metro Aviation recently delivered an EC155 to Penn State Health. The new Life Lion is a previously owned corporate aircraft that was purchased from Malaysia. Metro refurbished the 2011 aircraft and converted the interior to a medical configuration, which will provide more space to carry additional specialty crew members than the program’s current fleet of AS365 aircraft.
The aircraft is equipped with a Rotorcraft Services Group litter, the first that Metro has installed on an EC155 in conjunction with their supplemental type certificate, presenting a third option for completion customers. Life Lion is a first time customer of Metro Aviation, and it will spend the next few weeks training its pilots and crew on the new machine before putting the aircraft into service.
“We found it a pleasure working with everyone at Metro Aviation,” said chief flight nurse Scott Christensen. “Everyone was receptive to our ideas, no matter how crazy they were, and when we had questions or concerns they found the right person with the right answers each time. The work and craftsmanship done by Metro is of the utmost quality and is obviously of industry leading standards.”
Life Lion averages 1,100 transports per year and about 75 percent of those are inter-facility. It also responds to scene calls and offers specialty care for neonatal intensive care unit and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients.
