King Harald V of Norway was evacuated by air from Malaysia to Norway on 3 March after falling ill.
The system used to transport the king was developed and manufactured by Marshall in collaboration with Norway’s Nodin Aviation. It was delivered in 2009 to the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency, and Marshall has continued to provide support.
The system, which effectively enables the conversion of an ordinary Scandinavian Airlines Boeing 737-700 commercial airliner into an airborne hospital, was previously used in 2022 to evacuate injured Ukrainian soldiers to Norway.
Reconfiguring the aircraft to a layout comprising 18 hospital beds and 39 regular seats takes well under four hours, as does the configuration back to normal passenger mode.
During the evacuation of the king, an experienced team from the Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Service and Scandinavian Airlines was assembled, including medical personnel and flight crew members.
The system is an example of Marshall’s extensive lineup of medical offerings across air and land. This includes an updated palletised airborne medical evacuation system, in addition to rapidly deployable infrastructure products such as field hospitals, laboratories and state-of-the-art containerised CT scanners.
The use of the medical evacuation system used to transport the king is a continuation of Marshall’s long-standing partnership with Norway’s armed forces, building on the previous delivery of deployable field hospitals and ongoing maintenance, repair and overhaul of Hercules C-130 aircraft.