Athens, 13/02/2003 (ANA)
A judicial inquiry into the conditions and causes of the third crash involving an EKAB ambulance service helicopter was launched by Supreme Court Public Prosecutor Evangelos Kroustallakis on Wednesday.
Kroustallakis has ordered investigators to determine whether any criminally prosecutable offence has been committed and by whom. He has also asked that evidence from the files of the two previous accidents be juxtaposed to determine if their causes were similar.
Finally, he asked for the minutes of meetings by the committees responsible for ordering and accepting delivery of the specific helicopters.
The last downed medicopter was lost early on Tuesday while conducting a night-time flight to pick up a patient from the Aegean island of Ikaria, disappearing from radar screens shortly after midnight while flying two kilometers from Ikaria airport. It was the third Agusta helicopter chartered from the Italian company Helitalia to crash since the loss of a medicopter that crashed off the cape of Sounio in January 2001 and another that fell in Anafi last summer, while in both previous cases everyone on board was killed.
Meanwhile, the search for survivors or bodies from the latest crash and for the remains of the fuselage was still continuing on Ikaria on Wednesday.
Three oil slicks have been sighted in the sea near the airport and the seabed is being scanned by ships on the surface to detect the fuselage.
Due to continuing bad weather and rough seas, divers and a search-and-rescue helicopter have been confined to the shore and only one Navy vessel, two salvage vessels and local fishing boats were able to participate in the search, which authorities said would continue for as long as the weather allowed.
Commenting on the accident on Wednesday, meanwhile, government spokesman Christos Protopapas stressed that the government took all measures necessary to protect lives and pointed out that Health Minister Costas Stefanis had forbidden all night-time flights by EKAB helicopters after the latest accident.
He said that continued collaboration with Helitalia, the company responsible for the technical supervision of the helicopters, would be reviewed when its contract with EKAB expired within the year while noting that it had been chosen by public tender.
He also pointed out that the same type of helicopter was used by many countries for similar tasks, while adding that each country had its own special geographical and other characteristics.
''We have to look into the conditions of the specific flight,'' Protopapas stressed and underlined that there had been a thorough technical check prior to the fateful flight and that all safety regulations had been adhered to.
He said that reports of malfunctions in the specific helicopter would be investigated.
Finally, Protopapas announced that the army had volunteered to cover the immediate emergency needs of island populations after the ban on night-time medicopter flights, and that a more permanent solution would be sought during a meeting of the cabinet to discuss health and welfare issues on Thursday.
EKAB doctors and paramedics refuse to fly with Helitalia helicopters in future: Doctors and paramedics of the National Emergency Centre (EKAB) held a general assembly on Wednesday and stressed their refusal to fly with helicopters of the ''Helitalia'' company in the future.
Helicopter flights at night have already been forbidden, while EKAB representatives made it clear that they will not travel in ''Helitalia'' helicopters during daytime either, except for those belonging to the military, to ferry patients from remote islands to organized hospitals.
They said they want the management of flying facilities to return to a public carrier and reserved their right to call new mobilizations during their general assembly on Monday.
END.
------------------------------------------
Although all three crashes were different in nature (the first one was low flight in heavy night thunderstorm over the sea, the second one was night CFIT during t/o, the third one was on short final in excelent -night- weather conditions) they all had -at least- these in common: they were all flown night VFR in A109P helicopters operated by Helitalia (who have now lost 3 out of the original 5 helis on the job -60% in two years!).
The investigation will focus on pilot training under night VFR over the sea (a number of pilots were ex- Army heli pilots, instead of the more "expensive" to hire ex-Naval heli pilots), on A-109P's capacity to do the job and of course on Helitalia's practices and SOPs.
RIP.