ORNGE facing loss of its island base
Emergency funding for air ambulance service set to run out by June
When Porter Airlines and Air Canada pulled out of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport in March due to the global pandemic, that left just one tenant to keep the lights on. ORNGE Air Ambulance, the provincial agency charged with transporting the sick and injured — including hundreds of COVID-19 patients — was alone at the island airport.
While Ontario’s Ministry of Health has provided $5 million in emergency funding to keep ORNGE’s base on the island open, that money runs out at the end of May.
“Our hope and our plan is to stay at Billy Bishop but we are looking at contingencies,” said Dr. Homer Tien, president and chief executive officer of ORNGE. “The major one we are looking at is Buttonville.” A team of ORNGE managers toured Buttonville Airport’s hangars north of Toronto on Saturday. Costly renovations will be required if they move the helicopter teams and maintenance systems there.
Meanwhile, ORNGE’s brightly coloured air ambulances continue to fly out of the Toronto’s island airport. ORNGE has moved 325 COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 patients, along with hundreds of other patients who required emergency transport. ORNGE is also flying patient test samples to testing centres.
Tien was only three months into his job as ORNGE president (he was formerly its medical director) when the pandemic caused airlines that paid the majority of the Billy Bishop
Airport bills to cease operations. Tien was taken aback when he learned that ORNGE was on the hook for roughly $1.7 million a month. Normally, ORNGE’s monthly rent is roughly $200,000.
Tien, a surgeon, has worked for the Canadian Forces and Sunnybrook Hospital. He had just taken over the helm at the provincial air ambulance agency in December. Now it was March and the world around him seemed to be exploding. “They didn’t put COVID in my contract,” Tien says wryly. He’s quite different than Dr. Chris Mazza, the first ORNGE CEO who lost his job in a financial and governmental scandal exposed by a series of Toronto Star stories almost a decade ago. Where Mazza was mercurial, Tien is calm.
“I was initially caught off guard,” said Tien. “But when you watch the daily news and see what is happening economically, that is basically happening for all businesses. Aviation needs help particularly,” said Tien. He, the Ministry of Health and Ports Toronto have been in discussions ever since.
Ports Toronto is a federal business enterprise that receives no public funding and must break even each year to survive. Billy Bishop Airport is one of Ports Toronto’s business operations.
Ontario’s Ministry of Health has for years leased hangar space for ORNGE, paying Ports Toronto about $200,000 a month (no party will provide the exact amount). Now, ORNGE, an agency of the province of Ontario, receives $204 million annually to operate air and land ambulance services. But that does not cover a dramatic rent increase.
For Billy Bishop to stay open, its CEO Geoffrey Wilson explains that federal regulations meant they had to continue to run the ferry to the island airport, keep the tunnel open, provide security and other services.
“We lost 95 per cent of our revenue overnight,” said Wilson, who would not say if either Air Canada or Porter Airlines continues to pay any rent at all. “Our overhead didn’t go away but our revenues went away.”
Wilson said the Ministry of Health acted swiftly and provided just under $5 million to cover March, April and May expenses for Billy Bishop.
In a letter written to ORNGE by Ontario’s Minister of Health Christine Elliott, the minister sets out the terms. “The Ministry of Health will provide ORNGE up to $4,950,000 in one-time funding so it can continue to deliver services out of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport for the period from March 1 to June 1, 2020,” Elliott wrote.
After the letter was sent, the three parties continued to negotiate and agreed that the monthly payment would be reduced from the early estimate of just under $1.7 million a month to $1.4 million, meaning that $800,000 will be refunded to the province.
ORNGE operates two fulltime helicopter crews out of Billy Bishop. It also flies “fixed wing” aircraft out of Billy Bishop — where helicopters do emergency pick ups, landing patients at hospital heli pads, fixed wing planes transport patients from smaller to larger hospitals.
“Obviously, air ambulance in the time of COVID is of incredible importance for transporting all patients including COVID patients,” said ORNGE’s Tien. ORNGE’s next closest air bases are in London, Ont., Sudbury and Ottawa. Billy Bishop has the highest volume of Ornge helicopter flights in Ontario. In the most recent oneyear period, ORNGE had 1,460 helicopter arrivals and departures out of Billy Bishop, and 1,101 medivac flights.
Tien said his hope is that ORNGE stays at Billy Bishop, though a temporary base at Buttonville would be fine since most helicopter flights head north, pick up a patient and fly the patient to a Toronto hospital for emergency treatment.
“We are talking to Ports Toronto again and they have been very good with us. Maintaining air ambulance is the prime directive here,” said Tien. Commercial airlines are hoping to return to Billy Bishop by the summer but nothing is certain. “No one knows how long this will continue.”
From his viewpoint, Ports Toronto’s Wilson said he is pleased that ORNGE is still at Billy Bishop and he credits Ontario Ministry of Health for being proactive in March.
“I think (the ministry) saw Billy Bishop as a vulnerability in their life saving system in the early days of COVID and were asking themselves the question, ‘What if?’ ” Wilson said.
“They asked the hard question: ‘Are you in a position where you are going to have to close?’ We said we don’t know, but we don’t know how we are going to pay the bills and stay open and we don’t know how long it is going to last. And so they addressed it with 90-day emergency funding. And that’s where we are.”
Over at ORNGE, air crew and paramedics interviewed by the Star say that the already stressful work of air ambulance missions is more difficult, given the requirements of wearing personal protective equipment.
Tien said he is thankful that, to date, no ORNGE air crew or paramedics have tested positive.
“I don’t have any wood around here,” said Tien. “But I am very suspicious so I am going to tap on my head. But no, we have not had any (staff ) who have tested positive.”