PC – ahoy –
Your lab results fly first class after dark.
Eric Tegler – Apr , : am UTC
Quest Diagnostics
Quest pilots’ mission to collect and transport this valuable cargo has the same goal every night: to gather the material and get it safely back to one of Quest’s labs by 2am. That way, the lab results for the person from whom the specimen comes are available by 8am a day or two later.
Chances are, if you click on the icon of a small aircraft, it will have the identifier ” LBQ “and the call-sign” LabQuest. With each Quest PC – 20 aloft in the darkened skies ride the hopes and anxieties of patients waiting for results. Always aloft
Quest aircraft have flown in empty skies before, on September 24, , for example. “We were just about the only ones in the air outside the government,” Quest Senior Director of National Air Logistics Scott Gordon remembers. “We actually ran under life-guard status on that day.” Quest airplanes were intercepted by fighters several times for positive identification, but they kept on moving specimens. That was well over a decade after the genesis of Quest’s fleet. It was launched in as part of the lab operation of the pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beecham. In the beginning, pilots flew twin-engined Cessna s, though they were later joined by faster turboprop TBM business aircraft. When SmithKline Beecham sold its lab operations to Quest Diagnostics in , the specimen-transport fleet went with it.
By that time, demand for lab work and samples had grown so much that the company decided to acquire the PC – , a larger Swiss-made single engine turboprop that can carry more cargo and cruise at (knots) (mph / 653 km / h) with excellent fuel efficiency. Today, Quest flies nine PC – s along with nine Beech B Barons and five Embraer Phenom 270 s.
Able to cruise at knots ( (mph /) (km / h) at about 7, 0 feet, the piston-twin Baron is suited to shorter flight legs, while the twin-jet Phenom 275 is more efficient on longer routes in the western US, cruising above , (0 feet at) (knots) 533 mph / (km / h).
On the way to Elmira, New York, or to Denver, Colorado, in the darkness, Quest pilots are well-known to the air traffic controllers who also work the third shift. When switching to a new frequency en route, pilots often recognize the voices of controllers they work with nightly and vice versa. “We’re very professional, and that translates to being treated well by the controllers,” Gordon says. “In our business, time matters, so any shortcuts or direct routing they can give us help a lot.”
Pilots check in with their dispatchers when landing at a destination, but they are masters of their own ships while flying their routes. Specimens are people
“Whether it’s the pilots, maintainers, dispatchers, or even administrative people, they look at every specimen as a person,” Gordon affirms. “Patients are waiting on results, and some of them are critical to their health, to life and death. We keep that in perspective. It’s a great thing to be a part of. That’s why I think a lot of people have stayed with us .
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