A life-saving air ambulance charity was called to a record-breaking number of incidents in 2025, helping 72 more people than the previous year.
Great Western Air Ambulance Charity (GWAAC) attended 2,344 people in need of critical care last year, an average of six more callouts each month compared to 2024.
The charity, which covers Bristol, Somerset, Gloucestershire and parts of Wiltshire, said cardiac arrests were the leading cause of callouts for a second year in a row.
Specialist paramedic Fleur Rath said: “We are here to support ambulance crews delivering hospital-level critical care to the sickest population in a really quite challenging financial time.”
“Trauma dropped off quite significantly during Covid, whereas now we’ve gone back to normal life again,” Rath added.
“We have also had quite a lot of extremes of weather which has a massive impact on the type of patients we see.”
Crews were called to 521 cardiac arrests, which made up 22% of all missions in 2025.
The team also helped hundreds of critically injured people in 362 traffic collisions.
Gloucestershire and Bristol were the busiest areas for the charity.
“We’re getting more requests for assistance from our local land ambulance crews,” said Tim Ross-Smith, GWAAC’s operations officer.
“This could be due to the outreach work our crew are doing, educating land paramedics about when we can add value to patients who are in urgent need of care.”
Rath said the charity, which does not receive government funding, needs the support of local people.
“People can help with volunteering, they can help with fundraising, they can just help with spreading the word about what it is exactly that we do,” she said.
