Helicopters collide in Flagstaff -- at least 7 dead

I think that's fairly typical. In the one I covered, there was just one pilot - and the weather was pretty miserable at the time. The conditions were bad enough that two other helicopters that were closer to the patient had to pass.

 

Wow. And I thought the Army was unsafe, even with all its regulations and such.

Pretty unsafe. Bad weather = dead crew.

 

Here's a pretty good story, three_bags.

The one I covered in Newberry, SC is listed in here, though it did not crash into a "mountain." It was just woods. And, jebus, there wasn't an infant, just the woman. Don't they check their facts?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502494.html

New Medevac Safety Rules Sought
Rise in Fatal Helicopter Accidents Causes Concern at NTSB

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Page D02

The National Transportation Safety Board yesterday called for new safety standards in the medical transport aviation industry after an 18-month study revealed what the agency termed a disturbingly high number of fatal accidents among transport aircraft.

Many emergency airlift services, known as medevac, for medical evacuation, traditionally have been managed by hospitals. As the medical industry has cut costs, however, private companies have expanded to compete for the business of transporting patients, resulting in the medevac industry doubling in size within the last decade. There are about 650 medevac helicopters in service now with more flights than ever.

Since 2002, there have been 64 medevac accidents that resulted in 62 deaths, compared with 15 accidents and 17 deaths over a similar period a decade earlier. About 75 percent of the accidents reviewed by the board occurred while no patients were on board.

Last year, a medevac helicopter crashed into the chilly waters of the Potomac River near the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in an accident that killed the pilot and a paramedic and injured a nurse. The LifeEvac helicopter was en route to its base at Stafford Regional Airport in Virginia after taking a cardiac patient to Washington Hospital Center in the District. The NTSB has not determined the probable cause of the Jan. 10, 2005, accident.

"It is disturbing when you see that number of accidents in a three-year period, particularly in a profession whose mission is to save lives," NTSB acting chairman Mark Rosenker said. Were it not for these accidents, he said, "those people could be out there saving more lives."

One of the safety board's key recommendations would be to require all emergency service companies to install onboard technology that would alert pilots to rapidly approaching objects below, such as buildings and mountains. Other proposals would shorten pilot work hours and require risk assessments of weather and flying conditions before launching a flight. Too often, investigators said, private medevac firms compete for jobs, which can lead to some firms taking more safety risks than others.

"The risk assessment should not include the criticality of the patient situation," said Jeff Guzzetti, the NTSB's deputy director of regional investigations. "The pilot should be focused on whether he can get to his mission. He shouldn't worry about whether the patient stubbed his toe or he's going to die in 15 minutes."

The Federal Aviation Administration said it has no timetable for acting on the NTSB's recommendations, which would require many of the steps the FAA began encouraging last year.

In a 2004 accident in Newberry, S.C., a helicopter crashed into a mountain woods after picking up an infant patient and the child's mother a woman. All aboard, including a flight nurse and the pilot, were killed. Later, investigators said they learned that the firm operating the flight was the fourth one called by emergency dispatchers. Three other medevac companies either declined to take the mission or aborted it after takeoff because of inclement weather.

In the Newberry accident, the helicopter pilot was never informed by 911 dispatchers that three previous companies declined the job. Within the industry, the practice is known as "helicopter shopping" and deemed unsafe.

Helicopter shopping "should not go on," said Thomas P. Judge, president of the Association of Air Medical Services, an organization that represents the medevac industry. Judge said that most of his members have already taken steps to require risk assessments of each mission before each potential flight.

One of the key elements of such a program, NTSB officials said, is to ensure that the pilot is removed from information about the patients' condition and makes his or her decision to fly based upon the weather and flying conditions only.

Judge said he has concerns with other NTSB recommendations, including one that would require installation of terrain-awareness and avoidance systems that alert pilots flying too close to objects. Though the FAA said such equipment could be installed for $30,000, Judge said the cost could run as high as $250,000 per helicopter, which cost about $2 million each.

 

A medical helicoptor crashed near where I live in Western Wisconsin not too long ago. They flew out of Madison, picked someone up in Prairie du Chien, Wis., and then flew up to La Crosse, Wis.

The patient got dropped off and the helicoptor went to get gas. It took off from the airport and then crashed right afterward into some woods. As I recall, they don't know what caused the crash, which killed the three-person staff (pilot, two nurses).