Air Ambulance From Mexico to Los Angeles

Medical transport from Jalisco, Zacatecas, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Sinaloa and Baja California to Los Angeles hospitals, for families and for clubes de oriundos.

The largest Mexican community outside Mexico

Greater Los Angeles holds around 14% of all Mexican immigrants in the United States — more than any other metro by a wide margin — and California holds 36% of the national total. Mexican-born residents are over 10% of the population of greater Los Angeles and of Riverside.

The origin states skew west and north of Chicago’s: Jalisco and Zacatecas above all, then Michoacán, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Sinaloa, Nayarit and Baja California. Los Angeles has the oldest and largest network of clubes de oriundos in the country, with federations from Zacatecas, Jalisco, Oaxaca and others operating here for decades.

Short flights, which cuts both ways

Los Angeles to Guadalajara is under three hours. To Tijuana it is forty minutes. That proximity is why so many families travel so often, and it is also why people assume that getting home in an emergency will be simple.

It is not, for the same reason it is never simple: a patient who needs oxygen, monitoring or a stretcher cannot board a commercial flight, and the moment a doctor says that, the family is looking at an air ambulance they had not budgeted for.

Where we fly from

Jalisco — Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Los Altos.
Zacatecas — Zacatecas, Jerez, Fresnillo.
Michoacán — Morelia, Uruapan, Lázaro Cárdenas.
Northwest — Tijuana, Mexicali, Hermosillo, Culiacán, Mazatlán, Los Cabos, La Paz.
South — Oaxaca, Acapulco, Zihuatanejo.

Into Los Angeles: LAX, Van Nuys, Long Beach and Ontario, with ground ambulance to Cedars-Sinai, UCLA, Keck, County-USC, Kaiser facilities or wherever the patient is enrolled.

A note for Kaiser members

Kaiser Permanente has a very large membership across Southern California, and Kaiser is among the most straightforward plans we deal with. The question is almost never whether air ambulance is covered but whether Kaiser authorized it. Emergency transport out of a region where Kaiser has no facility is commonly approved, and a non-emergent transfer needs prior authorization from the regional authorization department. If the patient is a Kaiser member, say so on the first call — it usually shortens everything.

For clubes de oriundos and federations

If you lead a club de oriundos or a state federation in Los Angeles, this is worth ten minutes of your time.

Los Angeles has the oldest and densest network of clubes de oriundos and state federations in the United States, particularly from Zacatecas and Jalisco, many of them active in the 3x1 program for decades.

Your members travel to the same municipio, often in the same weeks, and many of them are older or travelling with elderly parents. One serious illness during the fiesta or over Christmas turns into a family raising forty thousand dollars on GoFundMe in a week. We have watched it happen more than once.

We can set up collective membership for a club or federation, so your members are covered as a group rather than one by one. We will also come and explain it at a meeting, in Spanish, with no obligation and nothing to sign on the night. If your club already fundraises for an ambulance or a clinic back home, this is the same instinct pointed at your own members.

Write to us and ask for the clubes de oriundos desk.

Before the next trip: the Paisano membership

Most of the calls we take from Los Angeles families are made after something has already happened, when the only option left is a full-price transport arranged in a hurry.

The Paisano membership costs US$119 and covers a trip of up to 30 days. If the member is hospitalised in Mexico during that window and needs to come back, the transport home to the hospital of their choice is covered: ICU jet or medical escort depending on what the patient clinically needs, plus a ground ambulance inside Mexico, travel for one companion where the aircraft allows, and a 24/7 line answered in Spanish and English.

For families who travel to Jalisco, Zacatecas or Michoacán two or three times a year, the annual membership at US$349, or US$499 for a household, works out cheaper than buying the 30-day cover each trip.

Cancel within 7 days of purchase for a full refund, provided the trip has not started and no claim has been made. Transport to the United States requires documentation permitting lawful entry; the membership does not create a right of entry and does not replace a visa.

See the membership plans and sign up — or read the guía del Programa Paisano en español.

Licensing and authority

Jet Rescue Air Ambulance operates as Med Jets USA, Inc. under Florida Department of Health EMS Service Provider licence AIR9505, status clear, verifiable on the State of Florida public licence register. In Mexico we operate as Med Jets S.A. de C.V. under AOC MTS/2015. Jet Rescue Air Ambulance is an indirect air carrier; all flights are operated by FAA Part 135 certificated direct air carriers or their foreign equivalents. Flying patients since 1994.

If it has already happened

Call us anyway. Send a photo of the insurance card front and back, the patient name and date of birth, the hospital they are in, and a short description of the medical situation. If there is no passport, say so — it is a smaller obstacle than most people think. You will reach a mission coordinator, not a call centre, and the benefits review costs nothing.