The government will be calling a magisterial inquiry into an incident on Saturday in which a car was left parked on the helipad at St Luke’s Hospital preventing a helicopter from landing.

The helicopter was meant to pick up a medical crew from the St Luke’s Hospital grounds to fly to Gozo, where a patient who had suffered a severe stroke was waiting to be transferred to Mater Dei Hospital.

File photo

The St Luke's Hospital helipad is being used instead of the one at Mater Dei because of tower cranes close to the latter.

But as the crew reached the helipad, well before the helicopter, they realised that there was a problem and redirected chopper to the AFM helipad in Luqa.

Mater Dei CEO Joe Caruana said that luckily the incident did not result in any material delays but he insisted that the hospital authorities were taking the matter very seriously.

“In reality, the trip was well within the normal parameters of such flights,” he said. Moreover, the patient in this particular case, was not in a condition to fly by the time the helicopter got to Gozo and had to be stabilised first before they could leave.

The hospital would not say who the patient is but Times of Malta confirmed it was, in fact, 58-year-old Gozitan businessman Ino Attard, who eventually died from a severe stroke on Sunday.

Mater Dei Clinical Director Joseph Zarb Adami said that in this particular case, even if there had been a delay, it would not have made a difference for the patient, although he was keen to stress he was not excusing the incident in any way.

Earlier this morning, the Health Department said it was investigating the case.

The department itself appears to have had its facts wrong in the statement it released this morning.

The incident happened at around 6am not 6pm as said in the statement and the patient was not on board the chopper when the aircraft was meant to land.

In fact, the helicopter was nowhere near the helipad when it was re-diverted to the AFM helipad.

In its statement this morning, the department also said that the patient was flown back to Gozo and then returned when the helipad was clear.