Wales Air Ambulance deploys Altitude Angel’s Approval Services platform

Altitude Angel, the world’s most trusted UTM (Unified Traffic Management) technology provider, has today announced Wales Air Ambulance is the latest organisation to deploy its Approval Services platform allowing drone operators the ability to request and pay for operations which involve taking-off and landing from a landowner’s property.

Wales Air Ambulance delivers advanced medical to people across Wales and relies on charitable donations to raise £11.2 million every year to keep its helicopters in the air and rapid response vehicles on the road.  

Every year, Wales Air Ambulance’s four helicopters and fleet of rapid response vehicles attend thousands of missions, covering rural countryside, towns, and cities, along the Welsh coastline and across vast mountain ranges. The Approval Service platform will deploy across two of the Charity’s airbases, Cardiff Heliport, and its headquarters at Dafen.

Described on its launch by [then] Aviation Minister Baroness Vere, as ‘a key step to [the UK] achieving its ambitious outcomes we are setting through the Future of Flight Industry Group’, Approval Services allows drone operators to submit flight plans, which take place wholly or in part, within an airport’s FRZ or require take-off and landing permissions from a landowner, quickly and securely, as well as facilitating any charges the airport/landowner have in place when a flight is approved.

On the deployment of Altitude Angel’s Approval Services platform, Deborah Stephens, Wales Air Ambulance, Airbase Manager, said: “As a lifesaving service, carrying out sometimes multiple missions a day, airspace safety is a priority. By utilising the Approval Services platform, we can ensure the safety of our crews and other airspace users on and in the vicinity of our airbases and can manage drone flight request permission and standardisation of the process for all parties. Altitude Angel has an excellent reputation and its technology will now be deployed at our airbases in Cardiff and Dafen.”

Chris Forster, Altitude Angel, Chief Operating Officer, added: “Being able to deploy our technology at sites operated by blue-light services, such as Wales Air Ambulance, is testament to the platform we have developed which is being used daily, in the real world. Approvals Services will help ensure the skies around where the air ambulances operate remain safe for all airspace users.”