Spotlight on lifesaving service

The air ambulance based at RAF Cosford is one of three. The others are at Strensham in Worcestershire and Nottingham East Midlands Airport. All the helicopters are leased.
The service covers 11 counties, providing airborne ambulance cover for 7.8 million people.
Although the helicopters do not receive any state or lottery funding, their lifesaving operations save the public purse huge amounts of money.
The £1 million a year it costs to run each helicopter - raised entirely by the generosity of the public - compares to a cost to the NHS of over £1,144,000 for the death of a person under the age of 35 who is killed prematurely in an accident. A patient aged under 35 whose life is saved by the charity and subsequently returns to work will cost the state £128,650 - a saving of £1,016,000 of public money.
The service saves one such patient approximately once every three weeks.

In the 2004/5 year the charity had an income of £4,226,000. £79 of every £100 went directly on operating the service - the rest went on fundraising, marketing and pump-priming to secure future cash (14 per cent), and administration (seven per cent).