The pilot of an emergency medical helicopter was text messaging before and during the flight that ended in disaster near an airport in Mosby, Missouri in 2011. His actions and his distraction were cited as contributing factors in the crash that killed four people on board an Air Methods helicopter in August 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board said today. During a hearing into the cause of the crash, Bill Bramble, a human performance specialist with the NTSB said, “A lot of texting was going on.” And while the information that a stream of text messages were received and sent by the pilot during the… Read More…

The Arabic word “haraam” is such an expressive word because it means two things; that something is forbidden and an activity is shocking. Haraam is the word that comes to my mind with the latest development in the plan to operate a helipad atop Children’s Memorial Hospital located on Chicago’s Lake Michigan. In the world of aviation, it is a article of faith that all employees must feel free to speak up about safety. So important is the concept that around the world, workers are encouraged to submit confidential or anonymous safety reports – even about their own mistakes – because with safety, you can’t fix what… Read More…

Photo from Illinois DOT documents Chicagoans, be prepared for the woomph, woomph, woomph of helicopter blades comin’ in from over Lake Michigan once the Children’s Memorial Hospital places a helipad on its roof, 411 feet above the street.  At the end of last week, the Illinois Department of Transportation issued permission for the hospital to locate the high altitude helipad in a community of skyscrapers, community and concerned activists be damned. It may be noisy, it may cause the values of million dollar properties on Chicago’s Miracle Mile to decline but that’s not the issue as far as I’m concerned. It’s the safety stupid! The… Read More…

Read the update on this story by clicking here. There’s a frightening sameness to the accidents that continue to plague the helicopter ambulance industry, but the crash that killed 58-year old Terry Tacoronte in in Missouri last Friday is notably different. Tacoronte, of McFall, Missouri was a patient, and though there have been 19 helicopter ambulance accidents in since 2009, this is the first time a patient has been killed since October 2008 when the toddler, Kirstin Reann Blockinger died in a crash in suburban Chicago. A mother of three and grandmother of eight, Tacoronte was killed on August 26th along with the pilot, flight… Read More…

The grounding of Airbus A380 airplanes sporting Rolls Royce Trent 900 engines was certainly warranted following the in-flight disintegration of an engine on a Qantas flight from Singapore. But what has made global news for more than a week now, also demonstrates a dramatic disparity in aviation safety. The Airbus near-disaster is being treated with tremendous respect.Yet, across the United States, another sector of the aviation industry is crashing aircraft at a rate equal to an airline disaster every day and unbelievably, this carnage is accepted as the cost of doing business.I’m talking about business of medical transport and the price paid by patients who are moved by… Read More…

I have more news on the underpinnings of the helicopter ambulance industry. Over the past five years I’ve been focused on the aviation side, the operational stresses that cause emergency medical aviation to be the most dangerous kind of commercial transport in America. You can read more about my work with Patrick Veillette on that subject here. But as the esteemed investigator John Fawcett always says, you never go wrong when you follow the money and I was lax in not paying more attention to the business side – how the for-profit air ambulance companies like PHI, Air Methods and Air Evac chase the dollars to… Read More…

So when my son walks into my office and sees me in front of my computer watching an animated short film, I can’t expect him to believe me when I say, “Really honey, mommy’s working.” Animated stories of the FREEWAY PATROL In fact, I was working, watching this You Tube video sent to me by a gentleman in Texas who found himself in practically this same situation, the latest victim of an epidemic of overuse of medical helicopters. In the video, a young driver is hit from behind and when she gets out of her car there descends upon her a virtual army of first… Read More…

Please don’t call them “heroes” or “fallen angels” or any of that other pap. Last night, pilot Allan Dale Harrison and flight nurse Ryan Duke were killed in the crash of an air ambulance in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Their flight paramedic was injured. Shortly after dropping off a patient at a hospital about 7:30 yesterday evening, the helicopter went down into a rural area and caught fire. Unlike the majority of helicopter crashes, the flight was being operated in daylight and in clear weather. It’s too early to know what caused the accident. But please, please, please, air crash investigator, when considering the factors that contributed… Read More…

The crash Thursday morning of an emergency medical helicopter in Tennessee is another tragic reminder of the crisis in medical aviation. Three people were killed when a Eurocopter AS350 operated by Hospital Wing crashed near Brownsville, Tennessee after delivering a patient in Jackson. While the crash happened shortly before 7:00 a.m., the bulk of the flight occurred during what is considered “the backside of the clock” the hours between ten p.m. and six a.m.. This is the most dangerous time to fly by helicopter medivac. Nearly half of all the EMS helicopter crashes take place on the backside of the clock. This statistic comes from… Read More…