This Saturday, the President of the Regional Government expressed his deep concern about the lack of air resources in Porto Santo, referring to the military aircraft that ensure urgent medical evacuations. He implied that the Portuguese Air Force’s ‘military base’ in Porto Santo was left without operational air resources due to the failure that occurred the day before with the C-295M.
The ‘media boom’ and the numerous reactions from readers and internet users to the medical evacuation between the island of Porto Santo and the island of Madeira of the sick regional secretary for Health and Civil Protection, Pedro Ramos, in the ‘presidential’ Falcon 500 of the Portuguese Air Force (FAP), and not in the C-295, an aircraft normally used in these aeromedical missions, immediately raised many suspicions about why it was the Falcon 500 that ‘rescued’ the government official and not the C-295.
Doubts dispelled this Saturday in DIÁRIO’s Fact-Check, in light of the clarification provided by the FAP – a fault was detected this Friday morning in the C-295 aircraft after the aircraft returned to Porto Santo at the end of an aeromedical mission.
Meanwhile, yesterday, the reaction of the President of the Regional Government also gained momentum when he expressed his deep concern about the lack of air resources (planes and helicopters) in Porto Santo. Speaking to journalists late in the morning, during the Harvest Festival in the Estreito de Câmara de Lobos, Miguel Albuquerque described it as “unacceptable” that the Region, especially Porto Santo, should be without operational air resources. So much so that he postponed raising the issue with Prime Minister Luís Montenegro until Monday, as he did not accept that the islands did not have the air resources necessary to help the populations.
Was the Madeiran leader right when he concluded that the Region was then without any operational military air assets?
Apparently, Albuquerque was carried away by the emotion caused by the health episode of his fellow government official and, perhaps, by the apparent lack of air resources that some media outlets reported.
In this regard, the Air Force, through Public Relations, clarified that practically simultaneously with the activation of the Falcon 50 aircraft from Squadron 504 – ‘Linces’ – as it was the fastest aircraft to reach the Region – which carried out the medical evacuation of Pedro Ramos, it also activated a C-295M aircraft that was parked in Montijo, an aircraft that would land at Porto Santo Airport (Manoeuvring Airfield No. 3) during the early hours of this Saturday, in order to ensure the replacement of the C-295 that was temporarily inoperative in Porto Santo, in addition to transporting material and specialist personnel to carry out repairs to the aircraft ‘on the ground’.
“The C-295 deployed on Friday night remained in Porto Santo as a reserve to replace the aircraft undergoing repairs. Meanwhile, the C-295 ‘from Porto Santo’ is already operational and the aircraft that remained on the island this Saturday as a reserve has already returned to base in Montijo”, confirmed the Air Force.
But there is one more fact that contradicts the alleged lack of air resources from the Air Force at Maneuvering Airfield No. 3 this weekend.
“A patient in need of urgent health care was today (Sunday) transported from the island of Porto Santo to the island of Madeira. The C-295M aircraft from Squadron 502 – ‘Elefantes’ was used for the mission”, informed the FAP.
It can therefore be concluded that the Region, and in particular Porto Santo, was not left without air resources to carry out medical evacuation missions if necessary. In fact, at the time when the President of the Government was criticising the alleged lack of air resources in Porto Santo – around 11am on Saturday – the replacement military aircraft had long been parked at Porto Santo Aerodrome since the early hours of the morning.
At most, the finding of ‘total inoperability’ of the air resources in Porto Santo would only be valid between the end of Friday morning and the beginning of Saturday morning, the period between the report of the failure in the FAP C-295M allocated to the Region and the arrival of an aircraft of the same type that came to replace the plane that was forced to remain on the ground temporarily, until the technical problem was resolved.
