Kodiak Aircraft airlifted 240 emergency ventilators to Sacramento, California last week, enabling critical health care equipment to be rapidly delivered to a region hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Percussionaire Corporation and Kodiak Aircraft are both based in Sandpoint, Idaho.

The emergency ventilators are produced by the Percussionaire Corporation, based in Sandpoint, while the Kodiak 100 Series II airplane and pilot time were donated by the Kodiak Aircraft Company, which is also based in Sandpoint.

To speed up the delivery of this emergency equipment, which can be the difference between life and death in treating COVID-19 patients, Percussionaire Corporation considered options of shipping by commercial airfreight.

However, using the Kodiak 100 Series II airplane (a 10-seat turboprop aircraft that is tailored for operations from small and remote airstrips and runways) enables the ventilators to be loaded directly on the aircraft at the city of manufacture, for the flight to an in-city airport in California where the acquiring state agency is located. This is significantly more efficient and time-effective than sending by commercial air freight, which would have involved transporting the ventilators to a mainline airport and going through the processing and logistics for shipping as airline cargo – and then repeating the same process on the arrival end.

The 240 ventilators are part of a purchase of Percussionaire medical equipment by the California Department of Public Health’s Emergency Preparedness Office. Kodiak Aircraft is covering the cost of the airlift services from Sandpoint to Sacramento, providing the Kodiak 100 Series II airplane and its pilots.

These are Percussionaire Corporation’s TXP™ 5 high-frequency percussive ventilators, which represent truly disruptive technology by delivering more air and/or gasses to a patient’s lungs. The technology is “service” proven, including deployment as portable units during the Desert Storm Gulf War. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Percussionaire Corporation readapted the system for in-hospital use with COVID-19 patients, developing the repackaging/adaptation in less than 24 hours (including the use of a 3D modeling). The ventilators were offered on the market within three weeks.