It can be used to fly in specialists and vital equipment, transport personnel and equipment to rough terrain or inaccessible locations, fly out injured or endangered persons, carry out rescue operations and evacuations. In Switzerland, the wide-body helicopter type operated by the Air Force is the Super Puma. It is mainly used by the coordinated air-rescue service to carry out missions of this kind. The fact that the helicopter can also be used as a means of operational command is still not widely acknowledged by the rescue services, let alone by the general public. One of the first and foremost tasks during a disaster is to gain an overall view of the situation in order to be able to mount a rescue operation in an as effective a way as possible.
Swift reconnaissance is therefore top priority.
Wherever possible, helicopters should be used to carry out this task, as they have the advantage of being able to combine an excellent field of view with the necessary ability to cope with both the terrain and weather conditions. Unfortunately in such cases the rescue helicopter and its crew are all too often only assigned this role. If the senior medical officer or doctor who is to take on the function of senior emergency physician or triage doctor has not yet arrived on the scene, the rescue helicopter's paramedic and emergency doctor can take on these functions in order to ensure that some sort of structure is brought into the rescue procedure as quickly as possible. The all-important factor here is that the first rescue team to arrive on the scene organises and does not rescue. If rescue work is already under way, the paramedic and doctor in the first helicopter to arrive are integrated into the rescue team in accordance with the instructions given by the local operation command unit, and continue to carry out these functions until they are assigned another task, such as, for example, the evacuation of patients.