Florida air ambulance crash

[Heliport]

Associated Press report Florida helicopter ambulance crashes into bay, killing three crew members

SANTA ROSA BEACH, Fl. A helicopter used as an air ambulance crashed into a bay early Wednesday, killing all three crew members aboard, officials said. Two bodies were recovered and divers were looking for the third victim.

The Eurocopter BO-105 left Santa Rosa Beach bound for DeFuniak Springs, about 25 miles away, to transfer a critically ill heart patient to a Pensacola hospital.

No patients were aboard when the chopper crashed, said Mike Burke, a spokesman for Sacred Heart Health Systems, which operates hospitals in Santa Rosa Beach and Pensacola.

The crew members included the pilot, a Sacred Heart nurse and a fire department paramedic. Their identities were not immediately released.

''We have lost three brave people, true heroes who dedicated themselves to saving the lives of others,'' Sacred Heart president and CEO Patrick J. Madden said in a statement.

Walton County Search and Rescue divers found two bodies in the wreckage in Choctawhatchee Bay and continued a search, said Lt. Stan Kirkland of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Sacred Heart officials said the crew radioed minutes after departure that they were aborting the mission because of bad weather and were heading back to the hangar at Santa Rosa Beach. There was no distress call then and no further communication with the helicopter.

Crash debris was found in the bay near the U.S. 331 bridge, about 75 miles east of Pensacola, Burke said. The heart patient was transferred by ambulance; no further information was disclosed.

The aircraft is one of two AIRHeart helicopters owned by Metro Aviation Inc. of Shreveport, La., that Sacred Heart operates in the Florida Panhandle. Sacred Heart has hospitals in Pensacola and Santa Rosa Beach.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

Very sad.

[SASless]

Another dark night, dark area, bad weather....and patient transferred by ground ambulance after the crash. This is getting to be an all too familiar event.

:(

[Heliport]

Associated Press report Three victims identified in Panhandle helicopter ambulance crash



SANTA ROSA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Divers recovered the body of a third and final helicopter ambulance crew member Thursday from Choctawhatchee Bay where the aircraft crashed.

Sheriff's divers from neighboring Okaloosa County located the body of Robert Heighton, a Gulf Breeze paramedic employed by the South Walton Fire District, shortly before noon near this Walton County community.

Also kill in the crash early Wednesday were Tom Palcic, 63, the AIRHeart helicopter's pilot from Fort Walton Beach,
and flight nurse Jack Chase, 47, of Santa Rosa Beach, Sacred Heart Health Systems officials said. Their bodies were found Wednesday. No patients were aboard.

Palcic had flown helicopters for 27 years. He worked for Metro Aviation Inc. of Shreveport, La., which maintains and flies two helicopters for Sacred Heart, one based at Santa Rosa Beach and the other at Marianna. Chase worked for Sacred Heart, which has hospitals in Pensacola and Santa Rosa Beach.

No one knew the helicopter had gone down until about five hours after crew members radioed emergency dispatchers to report that bad weather had forced them to turn back minutes after taking off from the AIRHeart hangar in Santa Rosa Beach. Thunderstorms were reported Wednesday in the Florida Panhandle.

The helicopter had been headed for DeFuniak Springs, about 25 miles north of here, to fly a critically ill heart patient to a Pensacola hospital. A ground ambulance made the transfer after the helicopter aborted its flight.

Dispatchers violated procedure by failing to make sure the Eurocopter BO-105 had returned safely, said Ed Baltzley, director of the Walton County Emergency Operations Center.

Crews are supposed to check with dispatch when they land. If they fail to so after 20 minutes, dispatchers are supposed to contact them, he said.

Even if the helicopter had been reported missing immediately, the crew probably would have died because of the severity of their injuries, said Walton sheriff's Capt. Stan Sunday.

No one noticed the helicopter missing until a relief crew arrived about 6 a.m. CDT and found the hangar empty.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. The wreckage was removed from the bay Thursday and taken to a warehouse in Destin, said Walton sheriff's spokesman Dennis Wise.

[MightyGem]

It is getting very depressing, as this type of accident is happening again and again. Why don't people learn from others mistakes? Isn't it time that the EMS community took a step backwards and thought about what is going wrong, and did something about it? :sad:

[SASless]

The history of EMS helicopter flying in the USA is a very interesting study of economics and management in-decision, mis-decision and just plain bad decisions.

A study of fatal EMS accidents would frighten the pants of a sane person I would bet. When one studies a series of accidents and sees clearly a pattern...clearly defined causes that repeat themselves over and over...one would think the operator and the industry would take effective action to correct those conditions.

The most significant changes that have occurred have been within the industry and not from the FAA. That in itself should tell us something.

The FAA itself has problems...."Helicopter" guys get the short stick on promotions and thus career prospects and pay which also adversely affects their retirement income. Getting and keeping good "helicopter" people within the FAA is a task in itself.

We see a trend now towards non-Ifr single engine aircraft in the EMS industry....reversing the trend towards multi-engine IFR aircraft (although most were single pilot IFR crewed....that is a whole different argument by itself...single or two pilot IFR crewing).

Throw in the miserable pay...bad working environments for the pilots at most EMS programs....one sneeze by mistake....followed by a complaint from any...repeat anyone else on the operation or hospital administration and you are outta here mentality of the operators....and it makes anyone wonder why the pilots put up with it.

I wonder if anyone has the accident data for the EMS business for the past five years or so....see just how bad the problem is.

An interesting stat would be the turnover rate of pilots at the various EMS operations.....my money would be on Air Life in San Antonio as being an industry leader in that regard.

[deeper]

SASless,

The history of EMS helicopter flying in the USA is a very interesting study of economics and management in-decision, mis-decision and just plain bad decisions.

Just replace USA with AUSTRALIA if you want to know how the system works over here.

Almost all of Australias EMS accidents are due to the overwhelming desire of the pilot to take the helicopter to places that no-one has gone to before. Lost in space.

[Steve76]

Sasless - this could be the most accurate comment you have ever made:

"Throw in the miserable pay...bad working environments for the pilots at most EMS programs....one sneeze by mistake....followed by a complaint from any...repeat anyone else on the operation or hospital administration and you are outta here mentality of the operators....and it makes anyone wonder why the pilots put up with it."

My 3 years in EMS revealed all these issues and another observation. EMS has the unfortunate attraction for the lowest skilled helicopter pilots.
WHOA! I can hear the typing flurry from here...

To qualify, and remember this is from PERSONAL experience. A lot (disturbingly so...) of pilots I worked for had never been out in the bush. Some were legends and really fantastic peers to associate with. They had something to teach you.

The minimums for the job were only 500hrs, so you end up with a lot of guys who only ever flew jollies around cities or ex-instructors with the absolute bare minimums. They are attracted by the fact that these jobs are easy to get and you don't have to leave the city. Comfort VS Ability.

The net result is unskilled Copilots getting dispensations to advance to Captain without even the reaching the customer minimums and then teaching another inexperienced copilot all the same problems.

Here is a quote from a collegue last year:

" ********* was bumped to captain after getting dispensation from ******. ******** still weak in a few areas so has a bit of learning left to do. Haven't seen him do a good approach to a pad yet!! but hey..what do i know?"

I have said before that they are the reason that SOP's are so important. To enforce commonsence. Not commonsence attained from making and solving mistakes in a non structured environ but that which is dictated by the management.
And as you say, one sneeze or complaint from the passanger compartment and you are defending yourself again. Caught between a rock and a hard place.

So whats the point of this rant. Well, when the **** hits the fan if you have no experience to draw from where do you stand?

You learned from someone who might have had an aversion to IFR so always found an excuse to say NO.
You never had a situation shown to you by an experienced offshore captain.
You have never learned to deal with something the SOP's cannot describe.
You have no resources to draw from.

Perhaps this guy in Florida found himself in this situation. In over his head and no lifejacket to get him back up?

[2beers]

Sad but important thread

This is very interesting. With a fresh helicopter CPL, (why did I go plank for such a long time?) my goal is to one day fly EMS. Here in Sweden I won't even consider it until I (if ever) have a couple of thousand hrs in helicopters.
Everytime an accident happens, no matter how sad, there is always something to learn from it. A lot of peolpe says that we shouldn't speculate in the cause of the accident until NTSB (or equivalent) has had its say, but I think that's wrong. If I died in a crash and everybody speculated that it was pilot-error (bad wx, to much stress or similar), maybe that would get someone thinking and one day keeping that pilot from making a fatal mistake. I wouldn't mind, I'd be dead anyway.

If an accident makes pilots discuss what happened and things to learn from it, we might actually have fewer discussions and fewer sad posts to this forum in the future. Sadly, what usually happens is that as soon anyone starts speculating, someone else goes "You don't know what happened, stop saying bad things about my sadly missed friend" or "Speculating only makes the pilots family hurt more". This is true for the media, but this is PPRuNe, not GRRuNe (Guessing Reporters), so we should be able to express well founded thoughts based on our own and others experiences.
Maybe not correct to the accident that works as the catalyst, but probably to many other accidents.
Every pilot (myself included) knows that if they're going to crash, it will be due to mechanical failure, but still, most accidents are due to pilot error, strange... :confused:

SASless & Steve76, interesting posts as usual.

Fly safe!
2beers