The Wiltshire Air Ambulance charity is confident it can raise the £10.5 million needed over the next three years to keep its new state-of-the-art helicopter flying.

Running the Bell 429, which flew its first mission last Friday, costs £2.5m a year – or £6,850 a day – and entirely from public donations.

It can only stay in its base at Devizes Police Headquarters for the three years, so building a new base is another challenge, to find an extra £3 million.

Chief executive David Philpott said: “How do we know we can raise enough? We just do. There is no scenario where we won’t. It’s a bit like someone once asked Elton John, ‘What would you do if suddenly your records stopped selling and you never made any more money?’ And he said, ‘But it ain’t gonna happen.’ “The financial year that just ended in October, we topped £2.5m, so we’ve hit that target. So, we’re confident, but we’re not arrogant. Nor are we flippant, as we have the smallest population, in Wiltshire and Swindon, of any other constituency served by an air ambulance charity.

“If you look at the Kent, Surrey and Sussex one, for example, they have a population of 4.3 million to fundraise from. We have 684,000 people.

“But we are already generating £3.56 per person in Wiltshire, which is quite staggering. It’s incredibly generous.

“We need to continue to be community-focused, making sure the Scout sending in his pocket money is treated with the same degree of respect and recognition as the high network philanthropist who might want to build a training room for us in memory of his late wife.”

He said the charity’s strategic objective was to not raise more money than it needed.

“If we’re just accumulating funds, that then goes into a bank. That means a woman’s refuge in Trowbridge or a little community toy library in Warminster is not getting a slice of the pie, because it’s all coming to us.

“We want to always measure our success by how many missions we do, how many lives we save, the scarcity of complaint letters that we have and how quickly we deal with them, the number of volunteers that we have and the meaningful engagements that we have with them.

“The real heroes are not our staff, but the WI groups and the schools, and our patients who survive and go on to become our greatest fundraisers.

“If we continue to tell their stories, the funds will come in.”

The new helicopter base is expected to be made known in the next three months; all options are within seven nautical miles of Devizes.

Instant action - 

Wiltshire's new £5m air ambulance has flown its first emergency mission.
The Bell helicopter went into 
service on Friday last week and was immediately sent to a road collision near Cirencester.
@WiltsAirAmb sent out the Tweet: “Helimed22 is tasked to her first HEMS call out, an emotional 
moment for us here at the unit. Best wishes to patient.”
It went out shortly after 11am, to a collision between a car and a lorry.
The 26-year-old man driving the car had to be cut free and was taken by the air ambulance to Great Western Hospital in Swindon, suffering from head and arm injuries.
Richard Miller, a clinical support officer who was part of the crew, said: “It is a purpose-built ambulance and we now have everything we need to help the patient at our fingertips.
“It was great to be part of the first team that went up in the new air ambulance, that is quicker and bigger than the previous one.”
It is the first time the county has had a dedicated air ambulance, having shared an aircraft with the police for the last 24 years.
The leased helicopter can reach anywhere in the county within 11 minutes.