“Last year I picked up an Air Ambulance Card membership application in a doctor’s office, intending to purchase a membership for my husband who travels extensively. Unfortunately I never got around to completing the application. In the meantime, my husband collapsed in an airport in Helsinki, Finland and called me while being transported to a hospital there. At 2 AM, I called the number on the Air Ambulance Card application, hoping they could advise me on the possibilities. They answered the phone on the second ring. When I explained my situation the lady on call said she would have someone call me back right away.

“10 minutes later, Stan Bradley, the Managing Director of the company called me to give me the numbers of 2 air ambulance services with whom I could deal directly. As it turned out, my husband was able to return to the US on a commercial flight, but in the meantime, I learned that it would cost over $60,000 to fly him back to the states via one of these private air ambulance services. You can imagine that I was kicking myself for having not purchased the card when I had the opportunity.

“But that’s not all. At 3 PM the next afternoon, I got a call from Stan Bradley just checking in to see if everything turned out okay. This is definitely the kind of company I want to do business with and I am now an Air Ambulance Card holder, as is my husband. Lesson learned.”

UAB CCT has partnered with Birmingham-based Air Ambulance Card, LLC to offer discounted air evacuation memberships to UAB faculty, staff and students. Under the partnership, members who are sick or injured 150 miles or more from home, domestically or internationally, will be flown home to the hospital of their choice. CCT will be the provider of choice for members who join under the partnership. Air Ambulance Card has set up a special website for UAB community at AirAmbulanceCard.com/uab where they can sign in with a valid UAB email address to enroll at special rates or find more information.

UAB Critical Care Transport is a hospital based, inter-facility transport program for patients in the United States and worldwide that require transport from one medical facility to another. Critical Care Transport has been providing medical transports for over 28 years and has transported over 37,000 patients. Jet aircraft intensive care units provide top notch support during long distance patient transports.

Air Ambulance Card provides travelers with prepaid hospital-to-hospital air ambulance service, domestically and abroad.  The membership program offers services for a period of one year to families or individuals, and corporate accounts.  Air Ambulance Card’s discounted UAB memberships cost $130 (a $65 savings) per year for individuals and $200 (a $95 savings) per year for families.  For more information visit www.AirAmbulanceCard.com/uab.

Fortunately, the Moningers are members of Air Ambulance Card. The medical evacuation membership program transports sick of injured members to the US or Canadian hospital of their choice when they are hospitalized 150 miles or more from home, anywhere in the world. “ I went back to the hotel and got on the phone right away. I told them I had the card and gave him the number and he said, ‘Well, that’s why you belong to Air Ambulance Card.’”

Air Ambulance Card dispatched a jet and a medical crew that flew the Moningers home to Colorado, where Sally had surgery and physical therapy. The ability to come home for surgery not only gave the Moningers peace of mind, it also saved them from the cost and hassle of an unplanned stay in Toledo, Spain. Bill Moninger says it turned their experience from a nightmare to what he calls a ‘relatively pleasant’ experience. “When I called Air Ambulance Card and told them what was going on they didn’t hesitate to say that’s why you have this coverage and we’ll get the wheels rolling for you, and they did.”

“We couldn’t speak the language at all, it was a Castilian Spanish, and we just couldn’t get any of it,” said Bill Moninger. What they did understand was that the doctor was recommending surgery within 3 days. “We didn’t know the competency level, it could have been great, but we didn’t speak the language. It just didn’t look like a good situation.”

The Moningers are members of Air Ambulance Card, which transports sick or injured members to the US or Canadian hospital of their choice when they are hospitalized 150 miles or more from home, anywhere in the world. “I went back to the hotel and got on the phone right away. I told them I had the card and gave him the number and he said, ‘Well, that’s why you belong to Air Ambulance Card.’”

Air Ambulance Card dispatched a jet and a medical crew that flew the Moninger’s back home to Colorado, where Sally had surgery and physical therapy. The ability to come home for surgery not only gave the Moningers peace of mind, it also saved them from the cost and hassle of an unplanned stay in Toledo, Spain. Bill Moninger says it turned their experience from a nightmare to what he calls a ‘relatively pleasant’ experience. “When I called Air Ambulance Card and told them what was going on they didn’t hesitate to say that’s why you have this coverage and we’ll get the wheels rolling for you, and they did.”

Air Ambulance Card® flies sick or injured members home to the US or Canadian hospital of their choice when they are hospitalized 150 miles or more from home, domestically or internationally. The membership program offers services for a period of one year to families or individuals, and corporate accounts.  Air Ambulance Card memberships are available to residents of the U.S. and Canada and cost $195 per year for individuals and $295 per year for families. For more information visit www.AirAmbulanceCard.com.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. At Air Ambulance Card, we received several calls each month from people with loved ones stranded in a foreign hospital. Not only do they have to raise money to fly their family members home, they have to pay that money up front, before they board the plane. They end up spending thousands of dollars flying to the patient’s bedside, staying in hotels and trying to communicate in foreign languages with doctors and lawyers.

These tragic situations are, unfortunately, perfect illustrations of why travelers need Air Ambulance Card. It is not a luxury, it is a necessary protection for travelers, their loved ones and their futures.

Your Personal Medical Portfolio should contain vital medical information you need to share with doctors and nurses in the event of accident of illness. It includes everything from family and doctor contact information to insurance, medicine and medical history details.

At Air Ambulance Card, we’ve long been proponents of travelers assembling this information before they leave home. That’s precisely why we created Find-ER by Air Ambulance Card. Find-ER is a free app for iPhone that allows travelers (Air Ambulance Card members or not) to import their vital medical information. Since we know travelers are never far from their phones, doctors and nurses can find this information at the touch of button. How do you get to hospital in the first place? That’s perhaps the coolest part. Find-ER has a one touch hospital locator that maps the closest ER’s. Download it now. It’s free in the App Store!

1 – Safety

2 – Information

If you use Twitter, make sure you are following @TravelGov, the official stream for the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs.

This feed offers to-the-minute travel warnings, “protecting lives and interests of U.S. citizens overseas”.  And, given today’s potential dangers to travelers, such as daily changes in the middle east or  natural disasters elsewhere, we think this is just another great way to be prepared.

You can also follow Air Ambulance Card on Twitter. We’re @webringuhome.

… It’s that simple, according to Travel.State.Gov.  Their recently rebranded Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, or STEP, is a free service providing the most current information, warnings and alerts about countries where U.S. Citizens may be traveling or living.  STEP also assists with overseas emergencies, such as natural disasters or loss of travel documents and passport.

You’ll need only to sign up once, and then you can add and delete trips from your account based on your current travel plans.

“We believe that a well-informed traveler is a safer traveler. Our consular officers around the world compile country-specific information, travel alerts, travel warnings, fact sheets and warden messages to provide you with timely and accurate travel information about every country where you may travel.  We include reports on possible risks and security threats so that you can make informed decisions about your travel plans and activities.”

Get logged in now by following this link to STEP!

Friday night, Air Ambulance Card Managing Partner Stan Bradley helped man the phones at a telethon that raised more than half a million dollars for the American Red Cross disaster response.

It was a great success, yet still just a small fraction of the total amount needed to meet the needs of this disaster. We encourage our members, our partners, our friends and family to be a part of the recovery now and for the future. Please donate at RedCross.org.