On Tuesday, the Ontario government announced that it’s investing $93 million in expanding Ornge’s air ambulance fleet with two new, larger, high-speed aircraft. The government’s aim is to provide faster, more reliable medical care to individuals in remote and northern communities.
Ornge, a not-for-profit organization that transports critically ill or injured patients across Ontario, will use the investment to purchase two new Pilatus PC-24 jets, twin-engine aircraft produced by Swiss company Pilatus Aircraft. The new jets require less refuelling and travel at a faster speed than Ornge’s current fleet, allowing them to complete four long-distance transports per day—twice as many as Ornge’s smaller planes.
The PC-24 jets can carry two critically ill patients or three stable patients at one time. They’ll also be used to transport patients with specialized care needs, such as neonatal, paediatric, bariatric, highly infectious patients, and patients on bypass.
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As part of the funding, Ornge will also construct a new base of operations, at the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport in Oro-Medonte, to house the aircraft. “Oro-Medonte has the benefit of a lot of space, for the teams, for the aircraft, for maintenance,” said Homer Tien, the president and CEO of Ornge, during a press conference. “It’s very close to Toronto. A lot of these patients are being transported to tertiary care centres in the GTA, and so the location is perfect such that we can get to the GTA, drop off the patient, and then come back to our hangar space here with the full ability to do maintenance.”
The Oro-Medonte location will be Ornge’s fifteenth base in Ontario. It will help connect with other northern bases in Thunder Bay, Kenora, Timmins, and Sudbury.
An additional benefit of the new PC-24 jets is that they’ll be able to perform ultra long-distance patient transports, allowing Ornge’s smaller aircraft to stay within their base regions for shorter-haul flights. “This will reduce wait times for patients and clinicians seeking transport, resulting in increased availability of our northern fleet due to shorter transport times overall,” said Tien.
The Ontario government has also stipulated that $25 million of the $93 million investment will go towards hiring 102 additional Ornge frontline staff by 2029, including paramedics, pilots, and aviation mechanics. The government said that this should ensure an aircraft is ready and available any time a call comes in.
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On average, Ornge performs 24 plane transports per day, 98 per cent of which originate in northern Ontario. And this is with its current fleet of eight Pilatus PC-12 propellor planes, purchased between 2009 and 2010. In 2023, the Ontario government committed $118 million to replacing the existing eight planes as well as purchasing four additional PC-12 planes.
The investments in Ornge are part of the provincial government’s Your Health plan, a strategy to improve Ontario’s health care system, connecting patients with medical services closer to home. Part of the plan has focused on increasing the number of paramedics in the province. In 2022, Ontario launched the Learn and Stay Grant, which provides students studying in paramedic programs at select post-secondary institutions with funding for free tuition, books, compulsory fees, and other direct educational costs. The students are then required to work in the same region they studied in for a minimum of six months for every full year of study funded by the grant. Since being introduced, Ontario’s paramedic programs have seen a 40 per cent uptake.
Ornge’s new PC-24 jets are expected to be in operation by late 2027 to early 2028, with the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport base completed several months before then.
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