I had a chance to see a thorough debriefing about their secind accident. Here is from my memory:
the story goes, that this air ambulance service was cofounded by EU, under condition, that it will be organised well under JAR OPS 3- HEMS. Greek government was thus forced to go into international public tender for organisation of this HEMS service and Helitalia won - and provided helicopters, maintenance and pilots. But Greeks wanted to have native PICs -so dual pilot crew was adopted - one Greek and one Italian or other nation, as provided by Helitalia.
The crash - CFIT happened approx two minutes after take off on a clear night with no wind and with good visual clues on take off, provided by lights of nearby town, below helipad, which was located on top of the small hill. Helicopter departed almost 90° away from prescribed departure bearing, and crashed at the altitude only a few hundred feet above the helipad elevation, and with landing gear still down.
No mechanical failure was linked to the accident.
The gentleman, giving the presentation, was quite familiar with some pilots, flying for this company, and he gave the following (shortened) explanation:
"we are facing the new sort of accidents", and he called it "a multicultural accident" Namelly, he was well informed about the relations between local and ("imported") company pilots, which were seen as intruders and a fight of egos was in the air most of the time, fighting for "who is right and who is more knowledgeable...., so that kind of cockpit atmosphere was obviously precluding any teamwork, dedicated to safe flying.
Sad to say this, but from the presentation and hard evidence provided, I had to concur with the explanation given.
