How does a medical rescue from Antarctica in the middle of winter actually work?

Saw a story trending about an American being medevaced out of Antarctica during the dead of winter. How does a rescue mission like that even happen in that kind of environment?

On July 31, 2026, an Australian aviation company, Skytraders, flew an Airbus A319 nearly five and a half hours from Hobart, Australia to McMurdo Station in Antarctica — landing in complete darkness with temperatures as low as -43°C (-45°F) — to evacuate an American citizen for emergency medical treatment, at the request of the US National Science Foundation and with support from the Australian Antarctic Division. The patient was flown onward the same day to Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand, reported in serious condition. Midwinter Antarctic rescues like this are extremely rare specifically because of the conditions: runways are compacted snow that ground crews have to actively groom and maintain before any landing is possible, weather can shift rapidly and unpredictably, there are no diversion airfields once a flight passes a certain point south, and crews fly much of the approach on night-vision equipment given the near-total winter darkness. The mission's co-pilot said reaching McMurdo in full darkness under those temperatures was something she believed had never been done before. Antarctic research stations, including the US's McMurdo, keep only a small skeleton crew through the winter (roughly February to October) specifically because normal transport in and out becomes this difficult, which is also why any winter medical emergency serious enough to require evacuation is treated as a genuinely high-risk, all-hands situation.