John Bicker wasn't referring to Era, he was talking about Temsco. September 10, 1999 was a day Temsco would rather forget.
One of their Astars with six people aboard crashed in low-viz/flat light conditions up on a glacier in Alaska. A search was initiated and subsequently another Astar with two persons aboard crashed. A third Astar found them, picked them up and continued to search for the first downed Astar, but alas, even it crashed! All were relatively gentle crashes that tore the ships up but didn't hurt anyone very seriously (with the exception of one person on the original ship).
The Base Manager was out searching in a fourth Astar. One can only imagine his anxiety upon hearing that a total of three of his ships were down (with one hapless crew being involved in two accidents in the same day!).
It is noted that only one of the three pilots had an Instrument Rating. The NTSB must be using this as a "cookie-cutter" cause, but their reasoning is specious because none of the three pilots reported any problems controlling their respective aircraft prior to smooshing into the snow. They all hit fairly level and under control, hence the "C" in CFIT. We can therefore conclude that the Instrument Rating by itself would not have prevented any of these accidents.
But a radar altimeter might have! The pilots reported that they thought they were higher than they actually were (kind of a "duh!" eh?). Had the information from a RadAlt been available, they might have known otherwise.
Having an Instrument Rating does you absolutely no good if:
1) you don't know where you are relative to higher terrain; and
2) you have no way of knowing how high you are with respect to the terrain immediately under you.