Thursday, April 18 STARS in Calgary unveiled two new helicopters as part of their multi-year plan to upgrade all of their outdated aircraft.

President and CEO of STARS, Andrea Robertson says STARS current fleet of aircraft are 34 years old.

"I think Western Canadians expect us to be available, (and) reliable. Our current aircrafts have done that for us and we knew it was time to get into the next generation to make sure we could do that."

Robertson says one of the reasons for updating their current fleet of aircraft is that they no longer make the models they've been using, and maintenance is becoming costly.

Robertson added the goal is to modernize and streamline both their equipment and training.

"So our intent is to have only one kind of helicopter that we're flying. So one kind no matter where you are in Western Canada that'll be the aircraft. It's going to take us a few years to convert because, we need to order them, they need to be manufactured and brought into Canada."

Robertson says the new helicopters won't be used right away as there is still more personnel training to do.

"But now we want them flying in the mountains, at night, landing at scenes, all of that before we lift our first patient. Same is true with our air medical crew. We want them very familiar with the back, where everything is so they can get it at a moments notice. Because, when you're with us you're critically ill and we don't want to be thinking, we want to be just doing."

Robertson says eventually other airbases besides Calgary will have these new helicopters but the conversion to them will be slow and methodical.