The Story of AirCARE1

My name is Denise Waye, I am a nurse and one of the owners of AirCARE1. I started working as a critical care nurse over 20 years ago. I worked in Surgical Intensive Care Unit, Cardiac Care, ICU as well as ER. As I was working in the ER, I was approached by someone who asked if I would like to interview to become a flight nurse for a company who flew jets all over the country as well as to International locations. I interviewed and was accepted for the position.

I realized there were some serious issues within the company. I like to try and fixed things so I went to the owners of the company. and mentioned these issues to the them. Their answer to me was-“Denise, when you own your own company, you can do it anyway you want.” After many months of trying to improve things, I became very frustrated. One day, I was discussing this dilemma with my husband. He said-Denise-you have two options here. You can either change your attitude…..or change your job. I decided to change my job.

I met Jake Jacobsen who was an Air Ambulance pilot for the same company. Together, we started our own company, AirCARE1. After our former experiences with the other air ambulance company, we wanted to build a company based safety, customer care, honesty and good service.

We started out with leased LearJets. After several years, we have been successful enough to own our fleet of Learjet 35A’s as well as operating under our own Part 135 certificate.