Fly2 Foundation helps patients from the regions get to their city-based medical care services.
Physiotherapist and commercial pilot Kennedy Lay established Fly2 Health in 2022 after recognising a lack of high-quality healthcare services in regional Western Australia.
Over the past three years, the Jandakot-based company has expanded to employ more than 100 staff members supporting more than 1,600 clients with physiotherapy, speech pathology, occupational therapy, exercise physiology, psychology and dietetics services.
These offerings are being delivered across more than 90 communities in WA, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales, including seven remote Aboriginal communities.
As Fly2 Health chief executive, Mr Lay said he saw potential to help more people in need by providing free medical transport for those accessing specialist appointments in the city.
“Fly2 Foundation came about when we [realised that] when we go out on these Fly2 Health flights, the planes are always just sitting on the tarmac for the day while our clinicians do their thing,” Mr Lay told Business News.
The time spent waiting for Fly2 Health specialists to finish their work in a regional community could instead be used to escort a patient to and from Perth for medical treatment.
“We aim to provide free transport for people who need specialist medical appointments in Perth who usually have to drive eight hours or get on a commercial plane with their various medical conditions,” Mr Lay said.
Fly2 Foundation hosted its first free flight in August 2024 and, according to Mr Lay, since then the organisation has received positive feedback from both communities and companies.
“There has been lots of reception, lots of interest from different areas because there’s such a gap in the market,” he said.
“The Royal Flying Doctor Service does some really good work, but they do the emergency, critical stuff, so that leaves a gap for the comparatively low-urgency but high-importance patients.
“For example, [a patient who] needs chemotherapy in Perth every so often, but they can’t get here, or it takes them eight hours to drive here.
“We’re really filling a gap in that market segment in WA.”
Mr Lay said Fly2 Foundation’s plans simmered down to three main goals.
“Our number one goal is always safety,” he said.
“We want to have zero major incidents when we’re carrying people.
“The second goal is to facilitate as many patient transports as we can and our goal for 2025 is to facilitate at least 24.
“The third goal is that we need philanthropic money to be able to do that.
"Fly2 Health funded the first several flights, but we’ve received the first round of generous donations.
“We have some targeted areas where we want to help people more because of general interest but at the same time, [in the interest of] people who are keen to support us from a funding point of view.
“The Goldfields is a big one, so Kalgoorlie and surrounds, and also the Mid West, so Geraldton and so on.”
The Fly2 Foundation board is developing a fundraising campaign to launch this year.
“To make those first two goals happen, we need to raise money,” Mr Lay said.
“We’ve also just brought on our first volunteer outside of the board, who’s a pilot coordinator.
“Previously, we were just using Fly2 Health pilots, but now this is an official part-time pilot, who’ll facilitate some of the day-to-day operations.”
Delivering services as a new charitable organisation does not come without its challenges and, aside from the funding aspect, Mr Lay said the clinical triaging process was one of the greatest obstacles.
“Our planes are not stretched, you can’t lie flat, and there’s a spacing limitation there,” he said.
“What that means is we have to clinically screen and triage patients really carefully.
“For instance, we can’t take someone with an oxygen bottle. We can’t take someone in a wheelchair.
“We need to identify what type of cohort we really want to target, but then that limits people that we can help.”
Mr Lay said most clients fell into the cohorts of children and people with recurring appointments.
“We’ve narrowed it down to the paediatric, kids cohort as number one,” he said.
“They might need to see a paediatrician, or they have a disability and need to get to Perth for some medical appointments.
“Second is the recurring appointments, like a hip replacement review or chemotherapy review.”
Compliance and safety are innate challenges within the aviation and healthcare industries, but Mr Lay said the same system used for Fly2 Health was simply carried over to support the safety of Fly2 Foundation services.
And, just like Fly2 Health, Mr Lay hoped to expand the foundation beyond WA to provide services to the rest of Australia by 2030.
“The first step is to get WA right and thriving,” Mr Lay said.
“Secondly, we’ll have to do it state by state, looking at gaps where this service doesn’t exist.
“Currently, the Queensland and NSW market in this space is quite well serviced, so we’re probably looking at … South Australia, NT and Victoria.
"Victoria can cover Tasmania, and then go into Queensland and New South Wales, so it’ll be a state-by-state approach.”
Mr Lay said the distinct difference between Fly2 Foundation and other charities was the way it addressed an unmet need.
“It comes back to the non-existence of that service in WA,” Mr Lay said.
“We’ve created a foundation that’s a blue ocean, where nothing like this exists in WA.
“The alternative is driving eight hours and usually people just have to accept that, so I think this creates a new solution in a state where it’s never existed before."
