Project Wingman – The charity

Established in March 2020 and running for nearly five years, Project Wingman was a well-being charity set up to support NHS care workers across the UK during the COVID-19 public health emergency of the early 2020s. Hospital staff across the country faced the most difficult time and worked hard to save lives in the most stressful conditions. They were true heroes and Project Wingman was proud to support them.

The charity was established by airline pilot Captain Emma Henderson and other like-minded individuals in the aviation sector, a sector facing its own COVID-19 tribulations with aircraft fleets grounded and tens of thousands of flight crew out of work. Project Wingman rallied over 6000 grounded, furloughed and redundant airline workers to provide a listening ear, a cup of tea and empathetic understanding in airline style lounges in the hospitals. In those spaces, healthcare staff were able to decompress, de-stress and unwind during the working day, and grounded aviation workers were given new purpose. The charity later went on to run a small fleet of converted double-decker buses taking these welfare lounges into hospital grounds, thus continuing to make care available in post-pandemic times from 2022 to 2025. Well-being training sessions for NHS staff followed and these continued when the charity closed, as a legacy programme. The charity itself was wound up in 2025, but we have kept this website because the story of Project Wingman is important and we are proud of what it delivered. We will publish more about the charity’s story shortly.