The Sikorsky S-76A is effectively an air ambulance that, until recently, was used for patient transport in B.C. under a contract with the Ministry of Health. Now it will be repurposed in a war zone, nearly three years after the Russian invasion of a nation of 37 million people, it was announced on Monday in Richmond.
“Helijet’s donation of the Sikorsky S-76 medevac helicopter is not only extraordinarily generous, but also historically significant, demonstrating the resolve of Canadians united in support for Ukraine during the third year of the full-scale invasion — not through words, but bold, transformative actions that will directly save lives,” Svitlana Kominko, CEO of the Maple Hope Foundation, said in a statement.
The foundation, a Metro-Vancouver based non-profit organization that supports humanitarian services in Ukraine while helping war-displaced Ukrainians here, is one of three organizations — the Ukrainian World Congress and Initiative E+ are the others — that have been working with Helijet for the last eight months on the air-ambulance project.
In November, two pilots and two engineers from Ukraine were hosted by Helijet and the Maple Hope Foundation as they got flight, maintenance and deployment training on the Sikorsky, which is to be used only for non-commercial, humanitarian and medical-evacuation missions.
“This life-saving air ambulance will be a game-changer, delivering critical medical aid to those suffering in the war-torn regions of Ukraine,” Paul Grod, president of the Ukrainian World Congress, said in a statement.
Helijet’s concerns about the Ukraine war aren’t new. Company president and CEO Danny Sitnam and his family hosted a Ukrainian family of three within two months of the war’s start, providing support and companionship until the family found a home of their own in Vancouver.
Sitnam said that after war broke out, he reached out to the Maple Hope Foundation and asked if he could help at all, like, for instance, hosting a family.
That would be wonderful, he was told. Like when?
“They’re coming in tomorrow,” Sitnam recalled with a chuckle.
Olga, Andre and their young son have since become firm family friends of the Sitnams, and “that relationship drove me to want to do more,” he said in an interview.
That would directly lead to the idea of donating one of Helijet’s medically equipped helicopters — a Sikorsky helicopter — to the Ukrainian effort to save lives.
The Sikorsky name is not new to Ukraine. The U.S.-based aircraft company, founded in 1923, was the brainchild of Kjiv-born Igor Sikorsky. An aviation pioneer who, in leaving Russia in the wake of that country’s Communist revolution, now has his namesake helicopter arriving in Ukraine to help resist Russian imperialism.
