Medicine :: Reflections on 35 Years inside the Air Ambulance Industry

This month Travel Care Air celebrates 35 years among the leading air ambulance providers inside the United States and around the world. Since 1980 Travel Care has flown 1000s of missions helping people in need. The company has flown to nearly every country throughout its history. Our owner, Ron Schaberg reflects around the past three and a half decades leading Travel Care, mid-air ambulance industry, memorable flights and much more:

What made you commence Travel Care Air?

Ron: My wife and I were both let go from a commuter airline in 1979. The airline went bankrupt right after, and then we knew we would not be called back. So we had to start our own company for survival. We saw a market in the medevac market in Wisconsin and believed strongly in assisting others and then we saw it being a natural fit.

Tell us concerning the early days with the company?

Ron: We started the environment ambulance side in Wisconsin and also had a shuttle service to Chicago that we ran for upwards of 30 years. Most of our flights were to Milwaukee, to Chicago and the Mayo Clinic. In the start when we had been in Wisconsin lots of our calls were to help in snowmobile accidents. Back then snowmobiles were slower so injuries were docile. Since snowmobiles are getting to be faster, almost all of those people unfortunately die at the scene. So we started to take more heart patients and patients with illnesses and grew even larger our services after that.

How has got the industry changed because you started?

Ron: When we began we were one of maybe three air ambulance providers within the state of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. Since then we view a substantial change inside the number of hospital helicopter programs. Now there are gone double the number of air ambulance providers than there are 35 years back in that region alone.

What are a few memorable missions?

There are already so many it is quite hard to choose. We transported a cancer patient. He was a Vietnam Veteran and wanted to go for the Vietnam Wall in Washington D.C. He had never been and we had been able to get him there.

There was an early flight where two young kids were in a house with a gas leak. We could get them out also to Milwaukee plus they both caused it to be through. That felt good. We also had patients which were water-skiing coupled with an accident. They lost fingers, and divers could dive to the water, recover the fingers and that we flew them their fingers on ice. We transported these to Madison as well as the patients could have the fingers reattached.

What was your first international air ambulance flight?

Ron: Our first international flight was obviously a trip private transportation from cancun airport Michigan to Glasgow Scotland. We leased a jet and put the medical crew for the flight. It was inside the early years in the company, possibly in 1982.

What made you locate to Charleston, South Carolina?

Ron: Around the middle to late 1980s since the industry expanded we started offering more international work and much more work out of other cities and states over the United States. We had to expand our business beyond the Midwest and desired to do more around the East coast. There was lots of medical work coming in and away from Florida from snowbirds and we all wanted to position ourselves to provide our services along the coast.

What does the future hold for Travel Care Air?

Ron: We remain aggressive searching for opportunities to grow the company. We want to be sure we are doing all we are able to to help people in need of assistance anywhere in the world and set ourselves in position to flourish our services.