Imagine the annual carbon footprint of it.
A helicopter ambulance lands on the hospital roof, flies the patient in, and the 6,000-dollar bill quietly drops to zero. No government pays for it. The whole service in Switzerland runs on about 40 francs a year, one nice dinner, from millions of ordinary people.
The service is called Rega, and it runs almost entirely on donations. About 3.6 million people each give it around 40 francs a year, a little over 50 dollars. In a country of nine million, that is close to four in every ten residents pitching in. No tax money goes into it. Donations cover about two-thirds of the cost, and insurance companies pay the rest.
Rega runs 14 helicopter bases, staffed day and night, spread so a crew can reach almost anywhere in Switzerland within 15 minutes. Its fleet of about 20 helicopters and three jets flew close to 20,000 missions in 2024 and carried 12,847 patients, around 35 people a day. You call one number, 1414, and the nearest crew is in the air.
One helicopter trip costs about 4,500 francs, close to 6,000 dollars. If the patient gave their 40 francs, Rega usually covers whatever their insurance refuses to pay. Last year it wrote off more than 14 million francs for its supporters. And because that 40 francs counts as a gift rather than insurance, there is no fine print, and nobody gets turned away over a condition they already had.
The hospital in St. Gallen, the one in the clip, sits at the bottom of a valley, so the helicopter cannot ease in low and flat. It has to come down almost straight, much steeper than most rooftops ever call for. On the busiest days one lands there every 15 minutes or so. The aircraft helps the pilot with an autopilot and a satellite-guided approach that holds it steady on the way down. And nearly half of these flights are for sudden illness, a heart attack or a stroke, where a road ambulance would be too slow.
So the smooth landing everyone is admiring is three things at once: years of training, a hospital boxed into a valley, and a rescue service most countries pay for through taxes. Switzerland pays for it with regular people, each chipping in about the price of one dinner a year.