24-Jan-2011 Source: AirMed International
Award-winning air ambulance company, AirMed International (airmed.com), has announced the creation of WeatherTurndown.com, a new website for use by all air medical transport programs, including rotor and fixed-wing.
Weatherturndown.com is a free service allowing medical transport programs to share current information regarding delays or cancellations due to weather. The term “weather turndown” has long been used in the aviation field as a shorthand term for inclement weather conditions and the subsequent ‘turning down’ of aircraft from takeoff or landing at certain airports. Having a centralized source for weather issues at airports and other facilities across the country will help medical transport companies better serve their patients and keep safety at the forefront of their operations.
The site allows each medical transport program to register one user who will then add others from their program who can also access it. Once logged into the site, the landing page includes a map of the United States highlighting which states have active weather turndown notices. Clicking on a state will display a list of the active turndown notices in that state, who posted the notice, and other information about the turndown where appropriate. The website can be found at weatherturndown.com.
AirMed International is one of an elite number of air medical programs to be accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS) and has designed this free service as another way to promote safety and the open sharing of information among air ambulance programs. CAMTS has established standards (19.02.00 – 20.02.00) used by its accredited programs in the event of weather turndowns. All programs are encouraged to utilize the website.
For more information about the weather turndown website, contact visit www.weatherturndown.com or call Sarah Hanley at 800-356-2161 or 205-443-4840.
HeliHub.com editor note: We consider it very short-sighted that “This site is optimized to work with Microsoft® Internet Explorer version 6 and 7” as the home page footer proclaims. HeliHub.com has tested the home page and list of programs participating, and we are shocked that this note is indeed true. Internet Explorer version 8 appears to be OK, but the site does not display correctly under the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome or Safari browsers. This shows a serious short-coming of the way this site has been developed. IE6 was first released in August 2001, and has long been regarded by the IT industry as “not fit for purpose” – indeed some publication actually ran campaigns in the last 18 months to try and kill it off. IE7 was released in October 2006, IE8 has followed and we have been in the beta phase for IE9 for four months now. Let’s put it this way – on the last 12 months of HeliHub.com, only 26.6% of our visitors used Internet Explorer version 6 and 7, and thus AirMed is risking losing around 73% of its market.