we were no longer just looking after our clients' interna- tional employees, but all their employees. As a result of this rapid shift, our business was maintained while responding to a changed demand. We also put in place our clients' health plans for their return to the office and their mask needs (we supplied hundreds of millions of masks). Class & Relax Lifestyle Magazine: What is your involve- ment in the airline industry, which you use constantly at International SOS?
At the very beginning, we helped international NGOs, which often arrive with equipment and money, but without a real local network, which we have all the time with a very large volume of patients and 14,000 colabo- rators spread around the world. Class & Relax Lifestyle Magazine: And with a very short reaction time, unlike governments that sometimes lose precious time in framing each other's interventions? Arnaud Vaissié: As a company, we are in a very different context, as governments are faced with political agree- ments from country to country to send an aircraft or relief supplies. Whatever the situation, no country will want its sovereignty to be questioned. We don't have that kind of problem. We have agreements on standby all over the world so that we can fly when the time comes, and they are reactivated at a given moment; as we intervene often, the authorisations usually arrive within a short time. But I must say that with covid everything was much more complicated! With this epidemic, people were afraid that if they chartered a plane, the virus would travel too.
Class & Relax Lifestyle Magazine: How did you deal with this crisis of unprecedented proportions?
Arnaud Vaissié: At the beginning of the crisis, when a per- son had covid, he had to be evacuated with a special plane, even when he was not very affected by the virus, because no commercial plane would accept to transport him. Each case was very complex to manage. We had up to four planes on standby around the world, ready to intervene for the United Nations; two for the French government, one based in Bordeaux, the other in Nairobi. These planes only dealt with covid cases. We were recei- ving seven times more calls than before the epidemic; now it's still a factor four. Class & Relax Lifestyle Magazine: During the Covid epide- mic, all other crises have not stopped? How did you manage your clients' needs in this unprecedented context? Arnaud Vaissié: There has been a halt in mobility. If our clients no longer move, we are much less involved. Historically, we were involved in international mobility: we had more than twenty million business travellers on our software. During the crisis we extended our offer to domestic services. In China, the US, Brazil, for example,
Arnaud Vaissié: We have a specialised division in Phoenix, Arizona, called MedAire, with a service called Medlink which is used by about 100 airlines worldwide, 70 of which are in the top 100. It consists of placing medical equipment in the aircraft, training crews in health proce- dures, and intervening when there is a problem in flight. Before covid we had (the numbers are coming back to that level) 150 cases per day in flight and 150 cases per day in gate. We are very involved in aviation, both com- mercial and corporate. Class & Relax Lifestyle Magazine: Doesn't working with governments quickly pose limits, both politically and in the choice of your clients? Arnaud Vaissié: Yes, absolutely! It has to be. It's the French or Western ethics that apply. That's what's exciting about the medical field: there's a company that has to make a living and respect a very strong ethic. This was done quite simply at International SOS, as we are two
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