Thames Valley & Chiltern Air Ambulance is here to save lives. Covering Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, the service has flown more than 10,000 missions to get people to hospital.

Whatever the emergency, the air ambulance is a vital service aimed at getting people treatment within the golden hour – the period of time when they have the best chance of surviving a serious incident.

The air ambulance costs £1.2m a year to keep running, and they receive no funding from the Government, NHS and the National Lottery. Everything they need to keep running comes from the public in the form of donations, fundraising, legacies and sponsorship.

The new aircraft, an EC135 Eurocopter (G-HBOB) is based at RAF Benson, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire. It carries a full range of life saving and medical equipment and two fully qualified Paramedics. The interior is purpose-designed and built for ambulance use, with loading capability for two stretchers from both sides and the rear of the aircraft according to the configuration used.

On average, each mission costs £1,229.