Dr McKay, 49, grew up in Fairfield and went to John McGlashan College, then the University of Otago Medical School and then took to the skies.
He is still there — sometimes. But he spends most of his time running his business, based on the Gold Coast, which flies all over the world rescuing people from medical difficulties.
A qualified pilot for many years, he is the founder of Medical Rescue, which has grown into a service which covers the globe, helping people out of medical problems and difficult situations.
A Medical Rescue plane, a Hawker 800 owned by Dr McKay, was in Dunedin on Monday on a mission to pick up a patient who had been in the intensive care unit at Dunedin Hospital and wanted to get home to Kuala Lumpur.
It was a routine flight for the crew — two pilots and medical staff — and getting around the world was just part of the job, Dr McKay said.
He seldom flies now, dealing in the logistics of getting planes to places far and wide.
"About 90% of the work is done before the plane takes off. It’s organising visas and border forces. There’s 27 people from about 14 different agencies involved all within about two hours to get airborne and get a job done. We work really hand in glove with all of the different agencies. You’ve got air traffic control and customs and border force and ambulances and security and hospitals at both ends."
Dr McKay said dealing with mishaps when people were on holiday was sometimes tough for all.
"You’ve got to deal with, you know, stressed-out relatives and they’re super vulnerable because they don’t know what’s happening and they’re prone to being taken advantage of as well.
"So we have to sort of diplomatically go in there and, you know, encourage the hospital to let us take the patients home just to save them some money."
He said no matter where people travelled they had to have health insurance. And read the ins and outs of the policy.
"So many people just rely on GoFundMe, but it takes them so long to raise the money that the hospitals keep them there and eat away at their fundraising efforts.
"So they get to a plateau where they’re spending it on the foreign hospitals and not getting enough to get them home.
"Kids, they go away in the holidays or uni students and they do something stupid in Southeast Asia.
"And if they’re drunk or if they’re riding a scooter, then they’re not insured and it comes down to the bank of Mum and Dad."
That brought about difficult times.
"They’re unconscious in Asia. Mum and Dad are frantically trying to remortgage the house to try and get money. So it’s super, super stressful for them. That’s why you’ve got to get insurance. You’ve got to know what your policy covers."
He said no-one thought about what could happen when picking holidays. They just looked at the sandy beaches and sun.
He said it was very hard but he just had to spell out for the family what the options were.
Many families did not believe what they were being told by overseas hospitals and wanted the family member home in their own hospital.
"The family will do anything because they don’t believe the CT scan report because it’s in a foreign country. Yet they could be up for $100,000 or $200,000 just to be told the same thing when they get home. Those ones are hard.
"But fortunately, they’re few and far between.
"But mostly, when we’re picking them up, we see the relief on their face. You know, when they see us come in, we’re speaking English. Whether it’s Australia or New Zealand, it’s something familiar.
"Our cultures are the same and you just see them relax. And you can see it in their pulse and blood pressure as well once they get on the plane. They just start to calm down and feel a bit more comfortable that they’re being looked after.
"Not that they weren’t being looked after, but they’re just, you know, in a foreign country with a different language, everything’s really scary and confusing."
His firm employed between 200 and 400 staff, depending on the time of year.
It was a job he did not initially search for but he worked his way into it.
"It’s been a long road, but it is rewarding. We don’t impact on a lot of people, but the people we look after, it’s a significant life event having to be medically evacuated from another country."
He had also spent some time with the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Australia and worked on oil rigs and at mining sites.
The service did not just fly. It also sent people to other parts of the world to help bring people home on commercial flights. It has a contract with mining companies in the Australian outback and the Australian Defence Force. Work in the Middle East was growing, he said.
As the cruise industry grows, so does his work.
He talks of having to land on skinny little islands with water lapping on both sides of the runway to meet a cruise ship. Of heading to an island no-one has ever heard of to pick up a sick cruise passenger. There is certainly plenty of variety in the job.
He tries to get home to Dunedin when he can, but is a busy man.
If anything, the pandemic has led to more work.
"People are looking to travel closer to home. They’re not going as far away.
"The cost of living has gone up, so people are looking for cheaper holidays. And those are in Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands and places where the healthcare is not necessarily the same as New Zealand.
"We’re the grim reaper of holidays. You don’t want to see us."
