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| Vol. 13 No. 94 | Monday
November 17, 2014 |
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Lufthansa
To The Rescue |
 Aircraft
outfitted with special equipment are not as unusual as they seem. Air Force
One, the U.S. President’s personal aircraft, is perhaps the best example;
airlines such as Etihad (EY), Emirates (EK), and Qatar (QR) have taken “first
class travel” to new standards with showers and whole suites integrated
into the first-class sections of their A380 aircraft.Lufthansa (LH), however, is responding to different needs in a different way. Their rather aged A340-300 (which is as unpretentious as the city whose name it bears, Villingen-Schwenningen, a rather unremarkable city near Stuttgart) is now retrofitted to be a mobile MEDEVAC jet, destined to provide rapid uplift capacity for helpers involved in combating the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. German Minister for Defense Ms. Ursula von der Leyen recently took some heat after she pledged German logistic support—including German army and public servant volunteers—for the West African states plagued by the Ebola outbreak, promising that “no one would be left behind,” meaning any helper infected with the disease was guaranteed quick medical evacuation. However, German press soon jumped at the fact that neither the German nor other European forces had at their disposal aircraft outfitted for that special purpose. While two of the German state aircraft (another A340-300 and an A310) have the capability to quick-change to airborne hospital outfit, they’re unsuited for dealing with patients infected with highly communicable diseases such as Ebola, Lassa, or Marburg. This time it looks like they naysayers were off track and that Ms. von der Leyen has proven the critics wrong: Technical experts from Lufthansa Technics aided by specialists on infectious diseases from the German governmental Robert Koch Institute have already started with the modification of the aged LH widebody, which is scheduled for completion by the end of November. The A340 includes three separate “cells” where highly infectious patients can be treated by medics in full protective garb. These cells will have their own air conditioning packs and will be biologically blocked off from the area of the aircraft occupied by crew and non-infected medical passengers. In the meantime, Lufthansa Airlines is looking for volunteers among their workforce both in regard to cockpit and cabin crew. Operating this modified A340-300 for MEDEVAC purposes to and from Ebola-plagued West African states gets kudos and high praise all around as a great humanitarian action from the finest, most dedicated government & airline partnership in a long time. Jens |
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