Mechanical Ruled out........

I'd say there was something quite obvious on that CVR
No mechanical problems in fatal Ornge crash: investigators - Sudbury - CBC News

Climbing Flyer,

This news report shows the two Pilots were new to ORNGE....and one would question the amount of time they had to settle into the system, aircraft, and Base.

Perhaps there is something to what CotB said about their being new to the job.

Paramedic who died told father Ornge helicopters 'well-maintained' - Sudbury - CBC News

Although the equipment list mentions a rad alt - it doesn't mention if there are 2, one for each pilot or if there are bugs with attention-getter lights and/or an audio alarm for low height.

What are the rad alt setting procedures in this operation?

Departing on instruments in those conditions sounds as hazardous as departing from a ship in the dark without NVG - extremely easy to become disorientated in the low-speed instrument environment.

Crab,

If you look at the map or Sat Photo of the town/airport....a departure can be made so there are light references but not for long (contingent to wind direction)....otherwise it is simply a very dark area for many miles to the destination which is a very small settlement too that is a very small bunch of lights in a sea of darkness.

NVG's would greatly improve the Safety of that Operation....as using them is the only way to fly in the dark. The Mark I Eyeball just doesn't compare to NVG's for seeing in the dark. As you well know. There is not enough Carrot Juice in this World to enhance normal vision to compare with NVG's.

Is the CAA/EASA going to allow UK Operators to use NVG's at Night when doing the EMS/Air Ambulance mission?

SAS and CotB, it is possible you guys are correctly reading the reports and CF is correct. I don't know the particulars but this operation was run for decades by Canadian Helicopters, and the captain may have flown with them. Again, I don't know the truth but rather pointing out that neither do most of us here.

Ultimately, it means only a little. Even years of experience in the night VFR/IFR environment does not make anyone immune from a bad day. Time in does not by itself prevent CFIT.
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The measurements on the swath in the trees are ridiculously out of whack. Anyone can use tree height and compare it to the width of the cut. I doubt the trees are 125 meters high. More likely 30-50 feet, maybe less.
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I sometimes ask myself why I keep getting into these discussions on here. I think it is because there is a whole new generation that uses the online world as their coffee table, their kitchen, their corner bar and bartender. We need to weed out the crap for them, as we have no choice.
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When I flew on this operation, better than a decade ago, I was so very fortunate to receive my training at the hands of some incredibly experienced pilots. These men took the time to show me what the 76A could and could not do, how to use every tool the system had in it to get the job done, and how to remember that in the end we were not 'heroes' but rather drivers. Use every tool as long as it was safe and legal.

Sadly, most of those old hands are gone now. Moved on for many reasons but the turmoil at CHL/Ornge hasn't helped.

To borrow from another story, when I arrived on base there were a lot of Zeke's, and because they truly cared about the job we did, they went out of their way to make absolutely certain I would become an old Brad, not a Timothy. Thanks guys.

Fundraiser for our brothers.
 

So very true....The Air as is the Sea, is a very unforgiving thing.

I especially like your comment about "being" Drivers.....not Heroes.

Way too many forget that and allow themselves to find trouble that could be avoided if one adhered to the notion they were out there to provide safe and efficient Medical Transportation services and not out there "saving lives".

I know I should stay out of this but I should bring some comments!

Pilot and apprentice is wright. In the past we were doing our training directly on the aircraft and we were able to see what the aircraft was able to do which was very important on the underpower 76A. We went from the aircraft to the A sim from Flight Safety to their B sim to now the S76 C+:ugh: from rotorsim. The training done now on the S76 is crap since it has nothing to do with a S76A:mad:. All new pilots have no clue about single engine performance even it was not the problem in this case.

We lost a lot of pilots due to the Ornge change which could not be worst, so many very experienced guys who have here for 15-20 years left during the last 2 years.

And Pilot and apprentice is also right about all people commenting about something they don't know. It is sometimes very painful to read what some people are saying when they do not have a clue about what we are doing. That' why I am staying away from most comment to avoid to get mad:ugh:.

We know it is a CFIT, we don't know why and only the CVR will tell us and answer very important question.

Don was working with CHL before part-time and left when Ornge arrived. He came back with us just recently. As I said before, as soon as you leave the runway, it is an instrument flight, it does not matter if the Vis is 1 SM or 10 SM, you don't see anything anyway. GIMY was a phase 2, so you have to fly it manually.
NVG's have been ruled out because of training cost, we 16 aircrafts, 84 pilots to cover Ontario, so it is a big deal on the cost side.

Thank you for the reasoned input.....and helping describe the situation ORNGE Flight Crews are confronted with in light of Managment decisions about Training and Equipment.

Definitely sorry to hear of the loss of people you knew and worked with....and understand all too well how that feels having lost Friends myself in the past.

Since this is a "rumour" site, it has been mentioned rime ice was a potential contributor. A very sad event regardless the reason.

Awfully short flight for Icing to be such a problem.....anyone got the weather for the time of the crash?

Had the aircraft been setting outside in the freezing drizzle or something?

I can't verify but I heard -3c and rain.

From what Arcal 76 has mentioned in his post, NVG was ruled out due to cost. What management always fails to understand that 'affordable safety' is a nice phrase, but one accident that could (possibly) been have avoided due to (in this case) NVG would have paid for the NVG installation and training for the next 50 years. And lives would have been saved.
My condolences to the families and to ORNG.

Absolutely right sunnywa:ok:

Humans are a tribal species. One consequence of our social bonding is to naturally take a 'them and us' approach to any misfortune.

Suppose (not this time, possibly) that a crash happens that would not have happened with NVG + appropriate training:
Or
In the real world decisions have to be made in the light of cost. It's called management. The decision to launch should be made based on all of the information available at the time of potential launch, including the consequences of decisions made in the light of cost; taking a 'Zeke'. approach. Once launched, it would be a cop-out to blame something (such as lack of NVG) that was known from the outset.

I think the best inputs so far have leaned towards the ' drivers not heros' and 'safe and efficient Medical Transportation'. If you take that to heart, then a bus driver crashing because he tried to corner like a Porsche can't blame management for not giving him a Porsche.

So anyone here purchased a T shirt?

7793 Fundraiser | Teespring

Are the folks in the UK paying attention here....they are about to embark on this Night Flying HEMS thing....or at least seem to think they are. Every one of these Tragedies serve up Lessons Learned....the key is for others to learn from them as repeating other's mistakes is not the way to go.

I forgot this one yesterday.......
We are not heroes :mad: Our job is to provide a service, safe and efficient. I am an helicopter pilot doing a specific job. I am not here to kill 4 people to try to save one. It is retarded and unacceptable. This "heroes and saving life stuff" is a recipe for disaster when people decide to push their limits to the extreme and break any possible rule.
We have seen that a lot during the last 10 years.
I have been in EMS for 16 years and I am not a hero. I am tired of this media stuff, they don't understand anything :ugh:

And to finish: we are only human, we try to excel, to do our best. But human are human, we do mistakes and we do have bad days. I am sure anybody on this website had bad days when they were not very efficient or realize that it could have been a catastrophe in certain circumstances, it does not matter how many thousand hours you have....

Well Said!:D

SASless: I hesitate to comment that we are slightly different here in the UK for several reasons:

The CAA are very risk averse in the UK [Some might say they suffocate aviation in some areas]. However, I stand corrected but our accident rate in public service aviation is very good compared to 'most' other countries around the world. Excuse the pun - but this is not by accident.....the CAA may have something to do with it.
Secondly, we are a tiny geographical nation. You can't fly far without bumping into serious ambient lighting. The CAA are fully aware of this and tailor the rules accordingly.
Operating under NVG requires the pilot to maintain his/her normal visual references based on ambient lighting in the event the goggles fail. You are NOT allowed to operate goggles where both tubes have a common power source and you cannot go where manual reversion leaves you up a valley with no visual refs.
And as I said earlier - not much of GB has many dark satanic areas left!

That is why the CAA are a little more relaxed over night HEMS. It is coming, as we speak. Required visual references in addition to the lack of corporate pressure to make a buck ambulance chasing - adds atleast two further layers of safety between flying and crashing.

As I said before - you guys who fly long routes (negative ambient lighting) in the US and/or Aussie land - hats off to you guys, can't think of anything more demanding in aviation than trying to stay wings level (IMC)with poorly equipped cabs. I have been there many many times and it makes your skin creep.:eek:

I hate to ask.....but what sort of patient were they dispatched to pick up? What kind of medical problem did the patient have?

Could the flight have waited till daylight....after all it is getting light pretty early this time of the year.....unlike say February?

I would not call an IFR AW139 with 3 crewmembers all on NVG poorly equipped. Australia are light years ahead of most countries when it comes to HEMS. Oh yes - and they fly SAR tasks as well.

@ SASless, as far as I know this was a patient transfer, airport to airport.

Probably not considered particularily risky, and a mission that would probably have been done multiple times a week.

Why this happened THIS time is the big question.

The machines are equipped to standards so why did this happen again, with a well trained crew...

H.

Ornge
 

Arcal, SASless,

ROUTINE excellence is heroic! Emphasis on routine...

Winnie....the question I posed refers to the "Urgency" not the Type of tasking.

Airport to Airport would make an Airplane the better choice.

Most Patient Transfers can wait for daylight....but where this happened the level of medical care available at the location where the Patient was located ...may play a role in raising the Urgency.

I have flown in some awful weather at night to fetch some fellow who had a broken arm or lacerations....while painful...few folks die of broken arms or wounds that are not bleeding........if you get my point.

If I recall properly....the Patient was fetched by Airplane following the crash.

So...it would be interesting to know exactly what the situation was re the Patient to see if Ornge uses some sort of filter to determine if an aircraft is launched or if they respond to every request without assessing the priority somehow.

SAS: I'll state some obvious background first.

The Ornge operation runs as an ambulance with a rotor, not an emergency service per se. Just as an ambulance may be rushing to the scene of an accident it may also be tasked with routinely shuttling patients between hospitals.

Because of the massive geographic area covered, many taskings to remote areas/communities were to take a patient from a land ambulance (that responded to the initial call) to allow that asset to return to active service rather than being held up for hours traveling to the nearest [appropriate] medical facility. The government has created a wonderful infrastructure of helipads along highways, in remote communities, and hospital pads to aid this way of doing business. A helicopter may be used in lieu of a plane to avoid an ambulance ride at each end to get to and from the airports.

In the days when I was there, a busy base will likely spend the day shift responding to 'emergency' or scene calls and the quieter night shift conducting transfers. The Ministry of Health dispatch had land, rotary, and airplane assets at their disposal and may launch more than one asset to a critical accident/emergency or pick and choose an asset as they saw fit.

They prioritized their calls and the helicopter could be retasked to a higher priority call mid flight. The crew was never informed of patient details prior to accepting a call. We would be given a location of pickup and destination and then decided if the flight was feasible.

I'll add that, in my opinion, NVFR and IFR helicopter operations were not dangerous in themselves. Rather, they had different risks to be managed and deserved respect.

Flight Paramedics
 

Very well described Pilot and Apprentice.

In British Columbia, the ALS crews or advanced life support, tasked to the scene call aircraft had an enormous amount of training. Seven years plus of trauma & medical training on top of their practical experience.

The majority of the Doctors at the small hospitals were very relieved to see the ALS crew when a patient turned critical and needed an expedited transfer to a facility offering a high level of care.

It wasn't uncommon for the paramedics to assist our Doctors in the ER when a higher care facility wasn't an option. I would imagine the paramedics are no different in Ontario.

As for the flying, we never thought twice about IFR when I used to fly on the Ambulance. Check the Metar/TAF, freezing levels, make sure you have a legal first and second alternate, file your flight plan and go.

I can't think of a single Captain on the operation that was any different. The S76A is an incredible IFR platform. Given the choice of low level, marginal wx on NVG's or hand flying at 4000 feet in solid IMC, the latter is much less stressful.

The crash happened within the first minute of the flight:

ORNGE helicopter crash: Investigator sketches out final minute | Toronto Star

skadi

More accurate and reasonable numbers now on the swath dimensions...as I mentioned earlier the trees are probably only about 5 or 6 meters high there.

Ornge suspends night flights to 58 remote pads
 

Perhaps ORNGE should just equip their crews with NVG if they want to make things safer.

Out of interest I was conducting some flyaway practice the other night from a 200' cliff-winching situation with me on NVG and the other pilot without. Although he could see the outline of the cliffs and the horizon, he struggled to maintain an acceleration to above 30 kts because he was flying into a black hole of no references (the sea). With NVG, not only did I have a much better view of the cliffs and an excellent horizon but I could see texture on the water which gave me visual speed and height cues to back up the instrument indications.

Now we used to fly all sorts of non-NVG approaches back in the 80s, to Nato Ts, upturned buckets with dayglo tape on, cans of burning kerosene and guys holding their torches and YES, they were manageable (with care and lots of training) but given the choice between returning to those techniques and using NVG then goggles are an absolute no-brainer.

NVG
 

Surely these should be standard issue to any EMS crew worldwide, employers and clients need to look at the benefits and not initial costs!

NVG's is the ONLY way to fly Night.....any other way and you are only playing Blind Man's Bluff!

NVGs for any night VFR flight beyond high cultural lighting areas! The difference between aided night and unaided is not quite night and day, but nearly so. I can see farther at night aided than I can most days, almost too much...

I've hesitated to weigh in on this as I agree that NVG's are a great tool and make NVFR both safer and easier. They would also add another big cost to an operation that has spent a lot of money to stay out of the flight environment that NVG's are designed for.

The question I will pose is: are those of you saying to just buy the NVG's actually looking at the job that Ornge does?

In my mind, it is the same as saying that no one should be conducting IFR unless they have synthetic vision. It would make the acquisition of visual reference much easier and increase SA.

The Ornge operation is only conducting night operations to established helipads/LZ's or airports. All are marked with lights or retroreflective cones. The SOP's were clear and appropriate to the role.

I would wager that if an objective and dispassionate assessment is made of what effect NVG's would have on the Ornge role, as it now stands, the result would be minimal. That would change if there was a need to respond to unprepared sites, navigate en route below MOCA, etc.

NVG's have their advantages, their limitations, and their place. STARS makes good use of them in western Canada to allow VFR navigation in higher terrain, but that terrain is not an issue in Ontario. Horses for courses.

No sooner had my article on 'No such thing as Night VFR' gone to Skies magazine than this accident happened.
NVGs make the difference - without them it's impossible to have 'visual' conditions away from cultural lighting.

PA,

I got my NVG experience in a dark corner of the world....that is well known for Haze. We used them for all Night Operations from one skid roof top landings to cruising around snooping on folks with FLIR and ordinary Vanilla Night Flying.

I have landed in amongst the Piney Woods to unlit, unprepared, natural clearings during nights with overcasts and minimal celestrial lighting....using no external lights of any kind (the worst possible situation). At a hover....with the naked eye....one could not make out the ground or trees...but we could operate quite safely on the NVG's.

NVG's are worth the investment for any....any.....Night Flying. Add a IR Filter to your Night Sun and it gets even better. Spotting Light sources with NVG's is amazing. We watched the strobes of Airliners from well over two hundred miles away. Flashlights shine like Beacons.

NVG's have their limitations....but I will gladly accept 20/40 vision with a 40 degree arc of view over being nearly blind at night.....anytime!

You keep you head and eyes moving and it is simply amazing how much you can see....what you can see.... that you cannot and will not see without the NVG's.

Add them to a fully IFR Aircraft and Crew and that is as safe as you can get equipment wise. That would allow ORNGE to return to doing what they did before the recent change and do so safely.

SAS, I agree with all you say about NVG's. But they would not be going back to what they did...they never did it. That was my point.

Like all these discussions, more kit and crew is better.

PandA, you are correct that 99% of the ORNGE operation probably wouldn't benefit massively from NVG because the transit and approach phases are safe enough the way they have been flown.

But, that 1% which is the night, unaided transition from the hover to the IFR cruise is where NVG would make a huge difference - low speed IFR flight is never good in a helicopter (without the appropriate autopilot transition modes) but that is what the crews are being asked to do on a regular basis on departure and that is where this sad (but seemingly avoidable) accident happened.

I love NVG. But in this case was there a well lit HLS with markers and clearway....?

i'm not sure NVG do much in the first few seconds after takeoff unless you take off from an NVG pad....

Otherwise you are gashing the "flip your goggs down" routine we all did in NI with luck...

Either use a properly lit HLS.....or go black.

Mixing it is bad news.

(yes I know that cultural lights are always a factor.....but we can minimise where we can the risk of stray light on NVS)