Originally Posted by
Grenville Fortescue
The American EMS fiasco is, in my opinion, a clear indictment of neglect upon the North American Federal Aviation Authority.
For American EMS operations to be safe the following needs to happen:
1) All single engine helicopter operations must be restricted to day VFR. In effect, single engine EMS helicopter operations should become "fair weather" day operations only.
2) For any other kind of operation a twin engine, two pilot, IFR-equipped helicopter must be used and operated within the constraints of Category A performances.
3) All IFR EMS pilots must complete a sensible monthly minimum of IFR flying hours (even if this means tasking more routine work at night, in poor weather or both).
4) Annually, every EMS pilot/copilot must attend a flight test with a neutral agency (ideally a specially commissioned non-profit EMS flight training and assessment academy).
Now why is this the FAA's burden? I'll tell you why. The medical industry (as it is in the States) are going to cut costs to the bone just as everyone does.
The aviation industry will try and respond as best as it can just as it always does.
The only supposedly dispassionate party in all this is supposed to be the FAA who, as the moment, are just sitting by watching one aircraft after the other plough into the ground. THEY ARE THE ONES who have to say "ENOUGH" and implement legislation which makes what I have written above (or something very similar to it) law.
The medical industry can decide what it likes and if it doesn't want to foot the bill for professionally managed twin engine operations then America doesn't deserve this service - it means North Americans for all their progress are unable to balance the equation of modern rotorcraft technology versus sensible medical insurance premiums.
Either way, the ONLY agency capable (supposedly) of cutting through the politics of the medical industry while at the same time protecting the operators is the FAA and its about time that our American cousins woke up to this disaster happening in their midst and did something about it.
It is a well known fact "dark air has no lift" and we should act on that. This is a paraphrase of an excuse offered by an early aviator after a "prang". It wasn't the underlying issue then, and it's not now."
The answer isn't equipment. The resolution will involve increased and more effective training and a change in the professional culture. My personal issue in the 'culture' is the casual approach to scheduling night duty without scientific considerations of human physiology and psychology. But that's my own peculiarity in attempting to understand why good pilots do stupid things more often at night.
The answer isn't equipment, or even rules by themselves. I recently read an opinion of what makes the safety advantage of multi-engine IFR 2 pilot crews isn't what's on the line for dispatch, it's the management philosophy that will allocate the resources to that level of equipment, then has policy and training to minimize risk in use of it. The "equipment" is secondary to the underlying philosophy of managing risk by effectively using intellectual assets. An analogy- I know pilots who are safer in the simplest, least equipped single-engine helos than are pilots with all the bells and whistles. Why?