Le Bonheur helicopter down

Yes, it was.

The weather was beautiful this morning, so it was likely not a factor.

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Whats up with all these med flight aircraft crashes in the past year or so? We always hear about them but never see an update on the cause of the crashes. RIP
 
Its almost always pilot error. HEMS is the riskiest type of professional flying there is aside from like professional acrobatics, I would guess.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
Its almost always pilot error. HEMS is the riskiest type of professional flying there is aside from like professional acrobatics, I would guess.
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I'd caveat that to scene calls to unimproved (and unfamilar) LZ's. Many are hum-drum transfers going pad-to-pad.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
Its almost always pilot error. HEMS is the riskiest type of professional flying there is aside from like professional acrobatics, I would guess.
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SeanD said:
Whats up with all these med flight aircraft crashes in the past year or so? We always hear about them but never see an update on the cause of the crashes. RIP
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I read an article that ran down the accident rate for HEMS over the past few years, and it actually isn't much worse than the rest of general aviation. The difference is that HEMS crashes make good new stories, so you hear about every singe one.
 
USMCmech said:
I read an article that ran down the accident rate for HEMS over the past few years, and it actually isn't much worse than the rest of general aviation. The difference is that HEMS crashes make good new stories, so you hear about every singe one.
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Ya, but HEMS isn't GA. It's 135. And it's accident rate is freaking horrible compared to every other sector of professional aviation.
 
deadstick said:
I'd caveat that to scene calls to unimproved (and unfamilar) LZ's. Many are hum-drum transfers going pad-to-pad.
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I stand subject to correction from a whirlygigger, but it seems to me that the last five or six crashes have had nothing to do with landing at a scene. To be wildly, (but admittedly) apocryphal, my sense is that it's 1) Weather, and 2) Equipment failure/mx/etc. (when it's not obvious pilot error, anyway). With a pretty severe gradient between the two (meaning that weather seems to be by far the most significant). Personally, I wonder whether the insane number of community-ships isn't putting a lot of pressure on rotor pilots to "justify their base". When there are four A-Stars and three Longrangers all sitting cheek-to-jowl competing, I have to at least wonder whether that doesn't somehow become part of the equation, however professional the pilots.

We've probably all been through this before, but in the rest of the civilized world, HEMS is usually done in a twin, and, more often than not, with a copilot.

PS. I would add that a lot of the transfers, especially those in marginal wx would be more rationally done in a bus, or maybe in an airplane. A lot of these people just aren't that sick, or at least that's been my experience.
 
z987k said:
Ya, but HEMS isn't GA. It's 135. And it's accident rate is freaking horrible compared to every other sector of professional aviation.
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This may be true, but HEMS has many inherent risks that the rest of GA doesn't. The number of crashes per year has held steady despite a large increase of EMS flying, therefore the accident rate has steadily been trending down.


Edit: Found the article in question http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/helicopters/air-ambulance-safety-closer-look
 
I had a chance to take a tour of Hospital wings this summer and meet with some of the pilots crew and the owner. Seemed like a very well run shop, pilots said helicopters were well maintained and equipped.

I don't recognize any of the crew that passed away, but like jknight said it was a beautiful day, vfr for miles...will be interesting to see the outcome
 
Boris Badenov said:
We've probably all been through this before, but in the rest of the civilized world, HEMS is usually done in a twin, and, more often than not, with a copilot.
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Having just today landed an H-60 in a pretty tight LZ surrounded by 100' trees, I can testify that doing those kind of ops in a marginally-powered helicopter, single pilot, and with unqualified "scanners" in the back, is a tough proposition. Hell, I was a bit nervous with two highly experienced scanners and a pilot with multiple deployments to Afghanistan.

There is very little room for error in these ops.

RIP
 
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