Jacksonville air ambulance startup quickly finds success, looks to expand range (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Northeast Florida is crowded by major health systems operating side-by-side, each requiring readily available, fast patient transfers — often across long distances. That dynamic is fueling the rapid ascent of Atlas Air Ambulance, a Jacksonville-based fixed-wing medical transport startup.
As the only air ambulance stationed in the Northeast Florida region, Atlas leaders have carved themselves a niche inside one of the Southeast’s most competitive medical markets.
Jackson Skigen came up with the idea five years ago while attending Southern Methodist University. Now 25, Skigen is preparing his company’s expansion: raising capital to acquire a new jet that would double Atlas’ reach to unlock new routes — and clients — across the East Coast.
Skigen grew up around airports. His father, First Coast Oral Surgery Founder Dr. Andrew Skigen, would often fly his personal aircraft from Jacksonville to Miami.
One trip, the Skigens saw a Pilatus PC-12 air ambulance land. While in a lull between flights, the pilot showed them around.
“At that time, that company had a base in Valdosta, Georgia, and the pilot was like, ‘We’re coming here three times a week, always going to Jacksonville. We wish there was a base here,’” Skigen said. “That sparked the idea, initially.”
A year passed. Then Skigen had an entrepreneurship class where he pitched a business revolving around that spark. About a year later, Skigen graduated, founded the company with his father and returned to Jacksonville to build Atlas.
Tapping into the health care hub
Today, Skigen’s company operates from a hangar at Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport, where it has space for offices, medical and go-bags for its nurses and paramedics.
The company’s current operational range with a patient on board is about 1,150 miles. It works with hospitals on a case-by-case basis. Atlas declined to disclose specific clients to the Business Journal.
“Jacksonville is unique,” Atlas Medical Director Dr. Benjamin Webster said. “We’re a big town, we’re not a mega city, but we are saturated with unbelievable health systems. Getting in with them and knowing that they have a local resource that can respond timely is the key to our growth.”
With about $500,000 monthly expenses between staff and aircraft upkeep, Atlas has roughly 30 employees. That’s inclusive of three full-time pilots and two backups.
Though Skigen doesn’t have decades of health care experience, his C-suite does.
Webster is also an emergency medical specialist at Baptist Health. Maureen Nordike, Atlas’s chief operating officer, previously spent more than a decade with Air Methods, a privately owned medical transport operator with 300 bases of operations serving 48 states, according to its website.
The runway ahead
Atlas pilots are flying about five days each week, some with multiple trips, as the company builds toward round-the-clock availability — a goal Skigen told the Business Journal it’s close to.
Those flights are typically localized across Florida, Georgia and Alabama, plus some Caribbean Islands, Skigen said.
“We may, for example, fly a patient from here to Atlanta and then drop a patient off, pick up a patient from Atlanta, and fly them from Atlanta to Gainesville,” he said. “Then fly them from Gainesville back to Jacksonville.”
Momentum aside, Atlas is already running into the limits of its single-aircraft fleet.
Roughly half of all transport requests Atlas receives fall outside the PC-12’s range, leaving Atlas having to turn down potential new clients. Those missed opportunities have clarified Skigen’s vision for what’s next: acquiring a jet. A Cessna Citation Excel in particular, Skigen said, would be a good fit.
“It would double our range,” he said. “And of those 50% of requests that we can’t do because of volume, it would be able to do about 90%.”
For Skigen, Atlas has found its footing and is pushing toward its next chapter, one that could eventually become replicating its Jacksonville operation elsewhere in the country.
Photo courtesy of Atlas Air Ambulance