ÖAMTC Air Rescue: 21,650 missions in 2025

On average, the Christophorus crews provided rapid air rescue 59 times a day.

In 2025, the ÖAMTC Air Rescue crews were dispatched to 21,650 missions—an average of about 59 missions per day.

“It is only by working together with our local partner organizations that we have been—and continue to be—able to help so many patients and fulfill our role as part of the critical infrastructure,” emphasizes Marco Trefanitz, managing director of ÖAMTC Air Rescue.

Marco Trefanitz, Managing Director of ÖAMTC Air Rescue.

“These figures demonstrate once again how important a dense network of bases and highly trained teams—both in the air and on the ground—are for medical care in Austria. Every day, our crews are on the scene where every minute counts.”

An overview of the response statistics:

Wide range of applications

As in previous years, the ÖAMTC emergency medical helicopters were called to a wide variety of incidents in 2025—ranging from acute medical emergencies to accidents of all kinds and natural disasters. Once again, the most frequent calls (10,159 times, accounting for 47 percent of all missions) were for internal medicine and neurological emergencies. “Especially with these time-critical medical conditions, the helicopter’s speed advantage plays a decisive role and demonstrates how indispensable comprehensive air rescue services are in modern medicine. Rapid transport to a specialized hospital can not only save lives but also, in most cases, lead to a significantly more favorable prognosis for the patient’s further treatment,” said Trefanitz. Other common reasons for deployment include accidents during leisure activities and at home (12 percent), as well as sports and recreational accidents in alpine areas (also 12 percent). Traffic accidents accounted for only 8 percent of cases requiring the deployment of an ÖAMTC emergency medical helicopter.

ÖAMTC Air Rescue

In 2025, the ÖAMTC Air Rescue crews were dispatched to 21,650 missions—an average of about 59 missions per day.

“It is only by working together with our local partner organizations that we have been—and continue to be—able to help so many patients and fulfill our role as part of the critical infrastructure,” emphasizes Marco Trefanitz, managing director of ÖAMTC Air Rescue.

Marco Trefanitz, Managing Director of ÖAMTC Air Rescue.

“These figures demonstrate once again how important a dense network of bases and highly trained teams—both in the air and on the ground—are for medical care in Austria. Every day, our crews are on the scene where every minute counts.”

An overview of the response statistics:

Base	Location	2025	2024
Christophorus 1	Innsbruck	942	775
Christophorus 2	Gneixendorf	1.342	1.470
Christophorus 3	Wiener Neustadt	1.275	1.149
Christophorus 4	Reith	999	1.022
Christophorus 5	Zams	930	894
Christophorus 6	Salzburg	1.735	1.867
7 Christophorus Street	Lienz	753	784
8 Christophorus Street	Nenzing	810	720
9 Christophorus	Vienna	1.449	1.692
10 Christophorus	Linz	1.073	1.185
11 Christophorus Street	Klagenfurt	1.068	1.138
12 Christophorus	Graz	1.297	1.387
14 Christophorus	Niederöblarn	1.029	1.059
15 Christophorus	Ybbsitz	924	1.018
Christophorus 16	Oberwart	1.215	1.282
Christophorus 17	St. Michael	1.117	1.106
Christophorus 18	Women's Churches	1.208	1.020
Christophorus Europa 3	Suben	1.468	1.543
Christophorus 99	Niederöblarn	290	304
Supplementary machine		2	3
Christophorus ITH	Wiener Neustadt	724	785

Wide range of applications

As in previous years, the ÖAMTC emergency medical helicopters were called to a wide variety of incidents in 2025—ranging from acute medical emergencies to accidents of all kinds and natural disasters. Once again, the most frequent calls (10,159 times, accounting for 47 percent of all missions) were for internal medicine and neurological emergencies. “Especially with these time-critical medical conditions, the helicopter’s speed advantage plays a decisive role and demonstrates how indispensable comprehensive air rescue services are in modern medicine. Rapid transport to a specialized hospital can not only save lives but also, in most cases, lead to a significantly more favorable prognosis for the patient’s further treatment,” said Trefanitz. Other common reasons for deployment include accidents during leisure activities and at home (12 percent), as well as sports and recreational accidents in alpine areas (also 12 percent). Traffic accidents accounted for only 8 percent of cases requiring the deployment of an ÖAMTC emergency medical helicopter.

Seasonal Locations: Focus on the Winter Months

Four seasonally operated bases supplement the ÖAMTC Air Rescue network during the winter season: Alpin 1 (Patergassen), Alpin 2 (Sölden), Alpin 5 (Hintertux), and Alpin Heli 6 (Zell am See) were dispatched for a total of 1,796 missions in 2025. Here, too, the helicopter demonstrated its advantages, as the operational areas are located in snowy, mountainous regions that can be reached much more quickly by air.

Standing still means falling behind—and saving lives is still a team effort

The vision of ÖAMTC Air Rescue is to save lives at any time, in any place, and regardless of the weather. “We are consistently pursuing this goal—for example, in 2025 we equipped one of our helicopters, Christophorus 14 in Niederöblarn, with a rescue winch for the first time. This now allows us to carry out rescue operations at night in hard-to-reach terrain,” explains Trefanitz. Currently, this is still a pilot project, and the experience gained from it will be incorporated into the evaluation of future operational possibilities. “Above all, we want to add another important piece to the puzzle of nighttime emergency care,” says Trefanitz.

Weather is a decisive factor in determining whether an emergency medical helicopter can take off or must remain on the ground. Here, too, technical aids are now available, such as the fog-penetration procedure developed in Klagenfurt (Christophorus 11) and now also in use in Graz (Christophorus 12). A particularly promising—because it is independent of ground infrastructure—way to eliminate fog as a hindrance is PinS (Point in Space), a satellite-based instrument flight procedure that enables flight through predefined, obstacle-free “corridors.” “Here, we are working together with our partners—the federal states—on the rapid further development and expansion of existing PinS corridors into a network that covers critical points in Austria—so to speak, ‘air highways’ with defined exits to hospitals or landing sites,” Trefanitz summarizes.

In closing, the managing director of ÖAMTC Air Rescue states: “The fact that we were able to help so many people again in 2025 is the result of extensive training and perfectly coordinated teams—both in the air and on the ground. On site, our crews work hand in hand with partner organizations—because saving lives is, and always will be, a team effort.”