Prince William will return to work as an air ambulance rescue pilot to a newly-equipped base after his Christmas break, a media report said today.
The 33-year-old Duke of Cambridge, who is employed with the East Anglian Air Ambulance, will now be based at a new purpose-built air ambulance base at Cambridge Airport, the Telegraph reported.
As well as shaving up to a minute off response times by allowing crews to land right outside the building, the new base has a few home comforts denied to the pilots and paramedics at the old hangar where they were previously housed on the site.
In addition to better training facilities, sleeping areas and improved kit storage, the crew room has a toaster, which was not allowed in the previous building because of safety concerns.
"Our job involves very intense 20 to 30-minute bursts of activity which can be very high pressure and demanding. In between it is vital for us to remain relaxed and focused so that we can help patients to the best of our ability," Crew member Dr Neil Berry was quoted as saying by the report.
"It is also important that we can decompress after an incident and the new base has room for us to go off as a team, talk about it and try to understand what we've seen," he said.
The charity, which serves Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Bedfordshire areas of England, regularly completes more than 150 missions each month.
Prince William works a shift pattern similar to the four- day on/four off worked by his colleagues, allowing for his royal commitments and donates his salary in full to charity.
The air ambulance charity needs to raise 10.5 million pounds each year to continue its work and has benefited from a boost in profile from the royal involvement.
