Originally Posted by
air pig
I work on fixed wing air ambulance in the UK and look in sadness and horror at the number of crashes or major incidients in the rotary wing EMS community particulary in the US. Reading both professional journals and other sources, the number of people killed over recent years in these incidents I'm afraid and I maybe flamed here that sometimes that some companies financial imperative may outweigh good judgemnt and lead to inadvertant pressuring the flightcrews to make decisions that on other days in other places that they would not make.
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The statistics from what I can find are between 2010 to 16 there were 46 accidents/incidents in which 20 had fatalities involved and in that a total of 50 crew and patients died.
I just completed a
very quick review of all NTSB database EMS helicopter accidents for the period you stated. I found 2 accidents attributed to IIMC while either on the outbound leg for patient pickup, or with a patient onboard. The remaining IIMC accidents occurred returning to base. I believe the “management pressure into accepting flight” is ignorantly applied as the scapegoat blame.