PRIVATE travel provider FlyMeNow of York has been awarded a life-or-death contract to fly human organs to transplant patients throughout the UK. The firm has signed a deal for an undisclosed sum with the UK Transport For Transplants organisation (UK TFT) to fly organs and, if necessary, surgical staff typically to NHS transplant centres near airports in Leeds, Cambridge, Oxford, Newcastle, Manchester and Edinburgh.

The contract will be handled by the air ambulance division of FlyMeNow, which also acts as a brokerage between business travellers and empty seats on private and chartered aircraft. It will mean drawing from its database of 15,000 aircraft to ensure a jet or turboprop plane is fuelled and ready for takeoff with its precious cargo within20 minutes of being alerted. Andrew Whitney, commercial director, said: “There could be 500 flights a year, each one time-critical and carrying vital organs. “All our aircraft owners are instructed by us to have enough fuel for five hours of flight. Every second will be critical. We have just two hours to get heart and lungs to patients, four hours for livers and pancreas and six hours for kidneys.” FlyMeNow, a finalist in last year’s New Business Of The Year category of The Press Business Awards, was among three flight organising firms in the final competition for the contract from UK TFT which provides the NHS with “blue light” road and air transport for transplant organs and surgical teams.

Last year, FlyMeNow’s turnover was £1.1 million and, having reached that point last month, Mr Whitney is hopeful of topping the £2 million mark at year’s end. The victory comes soon after FlyMeNow has set up a regular private link between London and Conakry in Guinea, West Africa, in an eight-seaterHawker 900 Private Jet with a refuelling stop in Malaga.Regularly on board are six senior executives from three companies, one of which runs government contractual services, another with expertise inpetrochemical exploration and the third which concentrates on pharmaceutical supplies. They are ready to pay the price of the flights which cost £42,000 per circuit because of the time, cost andinconvenience of scheduled airlines which otherwise would travel via South Africa.

But Mr Whitney sees the transplant contract as a huge achievement, given the recent collapse of other air transport companies like Jet Republic. He said: “It took an enormous amount of effort and resource to get to the point where we won this contract. It is a huge responsibility. We will bedelivering these organs to some patients who have been waiting an awful long time for this opportunity at life.”