Word: weatherize
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...knew about the first, failed mission. But he couldn't see the cloud, which lingered in a gap between airport weather stations. Kirby decided it was safe to launch. He flew his bright yellow Bell 407 helicopter to the hospital, picked up the patient, and took off for Houston at 2:46 a.m. Two minutes later, Kirby was flying 600 ft. above dense forest at 122 m.p.h., near the spot where the first pilot aborted. Kirby lost radio contact with the hospital in Houston. His helicopter dropped suddenly, to 100 ft. Its rotor sliced into thick pine trees. The cabin...
Wayne Kirby followed the standards, yet he and three passengers still died. Many aviation-safety experts believe such crashes do follow a pattern, one that looks a lot like Kirby's last flight: pilots launch in flyable conditions, only to be confronted midflight by unexpected foul weather, darkness and terrain that they are unequipped to handle. "The FAA says they need to study the situation some more," says Vernon Albert, one of the industry's top safety experts. "That's garbage. They need to get off their butts." (See a story about surviving disasters...
When was the last time you shuffled off a commercial airliner and saw just one pilot in the cockpit? Probably never. Federal rules require two pilots for every airline flight, and all airliners must be equipped with GPS, weather-tracking and collision-avoidance systems. Airliners fly predetermined routes, usually on autopilot, and always land at airports. When the weather turns cloudy or the night turns dark, airline pilots have the training and equipment to fly using just their instruments. "You wouldn't get onto an airliner that can't fly through clouds," says Drew Ferguson, lead pilot for Metro Life...
Unlike airliners, medical helicopters are unstable aircraft that require constant input from the pilot. They often land in remote desert canyons, on freeways and in muddy farmers' fields, places without precise approach paths, powerful weather-tracking systems or even lights. "In a medical helicopter, you're basically an on-demand taxi," says Blumen, who recently completed a study of 264 medical-helicopter accidents stretching back...
These troubles are not new. The National Transportation Safety Board first investigated the medical-helicopter industry's crash epidemic in 1988. It found that low visibility, often caused by bad weather, accounted for 61% of all crashes. "Weather-related accidents are the most common and the most serious type of accident experienced by EMS helicopters," the report found, "and are also the most easily prevented...