Since 1975, the tri-national Basel Airport has been home to Rega’s Basel helicopter base. In the early days, missions were performed by voluntary helpers, but nowadays the base is run by a team of professionals: ten physicians from the University Hospital Basel, four paramedics and four pilots take it in turns to be on stand-by duty at the base around the clock. During the first two years, Swiss Air-Rescue operated a Bell Jet Ranger rescue helicopter in Basel. This was followed by a Bölkow BO 105, the elegant Agusta A 109 K2 and, until recently, the spacious EC 145.
New base at the EuroAirport
Over a period of many years, countless locations in and around Basel – including the roof of the University Hospital Basel – were evaluated for their suitability as a Rega base and construction work finally began in December 2001. In autumn 2002, the new helicopter base was inaugurated in the international sector of the EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg, from where the Basel crew still take off on their missions today.
Welcome to the H145
The second of a total of seven new Airbus Helicopters H145 helicopters has been stationed at the Basel base since the middle of November 2018. On 17 November 2018, Rega presented to the people of Basel “their” brand new rescue helicopter at a public event on the Kraftwerkinsel in Birsfelden.
Frequent missions in Southern Baden
In the «border triangle», where Switzerland, Germany and France converge, the Basel crew are called on by their operation partners to deal with accidents on the road, at work and during leisure activities, as well as to transport people who are seriously ill. Besides these so-called primary missions, they also transfer patients from smaller hospitals to large medical centres. The operational area in Switzerland covers North-West Switzerland, the southern foothills of the Jura mountain range and Canton Jura. Rega is also available around the clock to the population in southern Germany with its rescue helicopters. The control centres in southern Germany provide Rega when it is needed. The Basel crew flies more than 1,000 missions a year, a third of them at night.
