HELICOPTER HEROES ARE BACK!

PRESS RELEASE: 1st October 2009

Yorkshire Air Ambulance to feature in the third series of BBC’s ‘Helicopter Heroes’.

Successful BBC 1 documentary Helicopter Heroes makes a welcome return to our screens on Monday 5th October. This will be the third series of the hit daytime documentary series which follows the work of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

The programmes, which air at 9.15am on BBC 1 will run on weekdays for 4 weeks throughout October. It's taken a year to gather material for the 20 programmes and BBC camera-directors have now flown on 600 missions with the crews of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance’s.

The third series of the popular daytime ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary follows the crews of the two Yorkshire Air Ambulances, Helimed 98 (G-CEMS) and Helimed 99 (G-GASH), as they are scrambled to various life-threatening 999 calls throughout the region. The shows have proved a hit with viewers, netting global audiences of over 35 million viewers to date.

The new series of Helicopter Heroes is set to be the best yet and features some nail biting rescue missions. They capture on film real life rescues ranging from motorway incidents to industrial accidents. This new series includes some incredible footage featuring the remarkable race to reattach the severed hand of a skilled craftsman injured by his power-saw in North Yorkshire, and the complicated extrication of a woman trapped in the wreckage of a light aircraft in the Yorkshire Wolds.
There's also a dramatic flight to get a transplant patient from her home in South Yorkshire to lifesaving surgery in Newcastle, and a prolonged operation to free a dairy worker impaled on a bottling machine in West Yorkshire.

Many of the rescues see the YAA crews working alongside other emergency services including Mountain Rescue, Police, Fire brigade and Ambulance services to help rescue and treat their patients.

Editor of Helicopter Heroes, Ian Cundall commented “It's a big ask expecting people doing jobs as critical as those of the pilots and paramedics to share their working lives with a camera, but they happily do that every day and we believe the series gives viewers a real insight into the life or death decisions taken almost daily by air ambulance crews.
We don't just turn up, film and go - our entire production team is based at Leeds-Bradford Airport with the show actually being edited in the YAA hangar. We believe that being in an aviation environment not only gives us a better relationship with our subjects but also helps ensure flight safety stays at the top of our priorities."

The series is presented by Crimewatch front-man and current Strictly Come Dancing star Rav Wilding and he was filmed across across Yorkshire at locations including Roseberry Topping in North Yorkshire, and the Cow and Calf Rocks at Ilkley.

Paul Gowland, Director of Fundraising for the YAA commented: “Helicopter Heroes has without a doubt, been a fantastic hit, not only for the YAA but also for other Air Ambulances in the UK. We hope that is has helped to heighten the profile of other Air Ambulance charities too and assisted them in their fundraising efforts. We have worked very closely with the BBC over the last three years and they have certainly become part of the team! We hope to continue our relationship with them into the future and continue to raise awareness of Yorkshire Air Ambulance as we all other Air Ambulance’s in the UK too.”

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