Two, Too, To

They are quite difficult I know...

That's the best you can come up with?

So, professional pilots should not make professional wage?

HAA can't sustain that?

For years the industry has been held down by retired military from the 60's-90's keeping pay low.

Facts don't care about your feelings.

You hit the button on the head. The retired military with full pensions at a younger than usual retirement age have consistently taken whatever salary offered to fill up the slots at HEMS for the last 30 years.

And yes, I'm retired military with a full pension at a "young" age and went into HEMS over ten years ago and took the low pay primarily because of my pension.

Let's hear all the crap comments now. ------  

what if you had $70K in flight school loan debt (your moms second mortgage?) and were struggling to make it on CFI wages? might you accept most any offer coming your way? hmm.

Over 70% of the industry are NOT military retired. Yes, years ago they were the problem. NOw that is not the case. Younger and less experienced pilots are accepting low wages to fly in an industry that 10 years ago would have taken them 15-20 years of real experience to even get hired into...NOW, they are the "targeted" HAA Pilot.

that is not a fact and whenever you see fact in all caps, 99% of the time it is bullsh*t

dude says ten years ago you needed 15-20 years experience to get an EMS job. lol. ems pay has gone up more than any other segment of the business but good post

low time and inexperienced pilots should be demanding and getting top dollar 

I was a low time and inexperienced pilot. I named my price to all the operators that were dying to hire me and this worked out well for me. 

Dollar?

a princely sum and a crap ton of money bro

Clinic pickup point and then to the hospital destination for which a ground ambulance vehicle could have driven the patient to the receiving hospital and back to it's clinic well before your helicopter?

Scam operation treated as if it's a combat emergency 

So all the places around the world that run HAA are just scamming people.

Yah right, and I have some ocean front property in AZ for yah.

Into the various levels of HEMS/HAA. From the Requesting Agencies, to the first responders, to the HEMS/HAA companies to the discharging hospital, to the receiving hospitals, to the med crew. They do some justified transports, but everyone involved looks the other way when they are questionable or outright unjustified.

But many think the med crews determine whether to fly of go by ground.  WRONG, when we receive a request, we go and don't question WHY.

because ground transport is not available 

The answer is "because they can get away with it."

Get away with transferring the cost of medically transporting their constituents to payers outside that community. Imagine the local budget savings of not maintaining and staffing a ground ambulance service for your community. And all you have to do is saddle your local taxpayers with a $40K helicopter bill when their condition was appropriate for a ground transport for only a few $K.

Spreadsheets got HAA into trouble in the first place

You determine your own worth when you accept a position, whether it be as an HAA pilot or otherwise. If you think that pay scale is an appropriate pay scale for your time, then you should not accept a position paying less.

YES

Just as well off in your pocket as in others!