After difficult years, Mercy Flight charts a path forward

“I don’t even know if there are words,” said Ferrentino, Mercy Flight’s president who has been involved in the nonprofit organization since its inception.

There was the hard landing in October 2021, when a pilot lost visual reference to the ground in a fog just north of Genesee County Airport. No one was seriously hurt, but that helicopter was badly damaged and decommissioned.

Then on April 26, 2022, Mercy Flight pilot James E. Sauer and Bell Helicopter flight instructor Stewart M. Dietrick were killed in a crash during a training exercise in the Town of Elba. The National Transportation Safety Board has not yet completed its investigation into the crash, though a preliminary report last May suggested the main rotor blade may have sliced the helicopter’s tail.

Ferrentino said nothing could prepare her and the organization for that day, even in a high-risk industry.

“It continues to be difficult,” she said. “We’re still healing.”

As the organization recovered, Mercy Flight founder Douglas H. Baker died Aug. 19, 2022, after a lengthy illness. Two days after Baker’s funeral service, Ferrentino lost her father.

Through it all, Mercy Flight persevered and found its path forward through community support and a focus on its mission of providing air and ground ambulance services across Western New York.

On top of the emotional toll, there was the operational challenge of going from four helicopters down to two, which limited the organization’s ability to respond to as many air ambulance calls as it did at full strength.

“It’s so difficult, especially for our people up in our comm center taking the calls,” Ferrentino said. “Aside from things we can’t control like the weather and aircraft being in for maintenance, to have to say, ‘We don’t have an asset to respond,’ is just…