change in our HEMS industry. On that date I learned of yet another HEMS crash, this one in Arkansas killing three, which turned out to be another IIMC accident. The moment I heard about that crash, something ‘snapped’ inside causing me to vow to return to America to share the knowledge I’d gained while fl ying SPIFR in San Diego, plus what I’d learned in the 30 years fl ying abroad utilizing two pilots with full autopilot.
If you read through the NTSB accident
reports dating back to the 1970s, the majority of HEMS accidents have been due to a single pilot losing spatial orientation, losing control, and crashing. Knowing the value of fl ying an aircraft equipped with an autopilot if a second pilot isn’t available, I felt I had the answer to put a stop to the majority of the HEMS crashes. The addition of synthetic vision technology is a huge bonus that should keep the pilot from losing spatial orientation because he can ‘see’ what the terrain looks like even if he’s in the clouds.
In instrument training we used to joke,
“One peek outside is worth a thousand cross checks.” That one peek would cause you to instantly regain situational awareness and spatial orientation. Having synthetic vision technology will be the next best thing to fl ying in visual meteorological conditions.
A friend recently told me he’d been fl ying with a student in a Robinson 44 with a Garmin 500H installed. He said his student was an average student who had never fl own on instruments. He put the student under the hood with only the synthetic vision display in front of him, gave him a few instructions, and the student fl ew a perfect instrument approach.
We all know technology is not a silver bullet. Airliners crammed with the latest technology
still crash due to
I fi rmly believe that, if properly trained, having an autopilot coupled with synthetic vision technology will have a signifi cant impact on reducing an unacceptable HEMS accident rate. What needs to happen now is for all HEMS operators to follow Air Evac Lifeteam’s laudable example.
Randy Mains is an author, public speaker, and a CRM/AMRM consultant who works in the helicopter industry after a long career of aviation adventure. He currently serves as chief CRM/AMRM instructor for Oregon Areo.
He may be contacted at:
randym@oregonareo.com
human
error. That is where regular crew resource management training comes in to play. CRM makes team members aware of how we human beings make mistakes and how to avoid making them.
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