Six mission a day average for Devon Air Ambulance

Devon Air Ambulance (DAA) experienced "another busy month" tackling 174 incidents in December, according to the charity's mission statistics.

The figure was down slightly on November's incident count of 179, but the service said it still averaged about six call outs a day.

The charity said it attended 30 road traffic collisions, an increase of five on the previous month and more than double the amount seen in September.

It advised people to "take extra care on our roads this winter" as wet weather becomes a more regular feature.

It said: "Coupled with the sudden mist, fog and ice patches that we are accustomed to in Devon, it's important that we all take extra care on our roads this winter and leave plenty of time to reach our destination safely."

The charity added it dealt with a similar amount of trauma and medical emergencies compared to November, but a large increase in the number of incidents taking place in the dark.

It said: "We were tasked to 52.3% trauma emergencies and 46.6% medical emergencies.

"Eight of these missions took us across our county borders in December as we were tasked to respond to one patient in Cornwall, one in Dorset and six in Somerset.

"Our busiest days of the week were Sundays where we were tasked to 25 missions and we were tasked to 67 missions in the hours of darkness.

"The hospital we visited most was Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital."

Community landing sites aid DAA to conduct night missions as they allow aircraft to land quickly and safely during the hours of darkness.

DAA launched its 203rd community landing site at the start of November in Plymouth.

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