Fatal Flights
The cost of helicopter competition
Interactive: Fatal Crashes Since 1980
Fatal Flights: Fatal Medical Helicopter Crashes Since 1980 (washingtonpost.com)
FATAL FLIGHTS A Perilous Rush to Profit
The Deadly Cost of Swooping In to Save a Life
By Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 21, 2009
SANTA ROSA BEACH, Fla. Shortly after midnight on a storm-swept October night in 2004, Tom Palcic, a medical helicopter pilot, started across Choctawatchee Bay to pick up a hospital patient and transport him to a facility 60 miles away.
Such flights are common in the highly competitive multibillion-dollar air-medical business. Although the public profile of medical helicopters has them swooping to crash scenes at the edge of highways, most flights, like Palcic's, involve shuttling patients between hospitals.
The director of the helicopter program for which Palcic flew called these lucrative patients "golden trout" and pushed pilots to reel in as many as possible. When pilots balked at flying in bad weather, he called them sissies and second-guessed them, records and interviews show.
Palcic, 63, was just two minutes into the flight of AIRHeart-1 when his crew radioed a dispatcher that he was turning back because of the thunder and lightning.
Moments later, Palcic's helicopter banked in clouds and plunged 700 feet into shallow waters, killing him, a flight nurse and a paramedic. A woman who lived nearby recalled that the vibration shook candlesticks out of their holders...
What began almost four decades ago as a way to save lives is now one of the most dangerous jobs in America -- deadlier than logging, mining or police work -- with 113 deaths for every 100,000 employees, The Post found. Only working on a fishing boat is riskier. The rate for airline pilots is 80.1...