By Darrell Smith
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As investigators work to determine what caused an Airbus EC130 T2 medical helicopter to crash onto busy Highway 50 critically injuring the three aboard, Monday’s dramatic crash in Sacramento highlights the critical role of air ambulances and the perils their pilots and crew face in the skies.
“Every day these helicopter crews ferry patients in dire need from around the North State to advanced medical facilities elsewhere in California,” state Sen. Megan Dahle, R-Bieber, who represents the Shasta County area district where the Reach air crew was based, said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash of the copter, operated by Santa Rosa-based Reach Air Medical Services, NTSB officials said in a Tuesday social media post.
The helicopter, with a pilot, nurse and paramedic aboard, crashed just after 7 p.m. Monday, moments after lifting off from UC Davis Medical Center less than a quarter-mile away, said authorities. The pilot managed to avoid the hotels, businesses and homes near the highway as well as the cars below before the helicopter crashed.
Susan Smith, a 67-year-old nurse from the Redding area was one of the three taken to hospital after the crash, The Sacramento Bee has confirmed. Smith and two others hospitalized, the pilot and a paramedic, appeared to have been working onboard a flight operated by Reach, according to firefighters.
The EC130 is a single-engine, light utility helicopter used in a variety of settings, from touring and shuttle services, as well as for air ambulance services. The Reach Air-owned, Redding-bound EC130 that went down in Sacramento on Monday night had been in service since July 2021, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
In all, 83 helicopter air ambulance accidents occurred in the U.S. from 2010 to 2021, according to a 2024 study in industry guide Air Medical Journal, though there were fewer accidents over the last five years of the study. Researchers tallied 47 accidents in 2010-2015, compared to 36 in 2016-2021.
The study’s researchers surmised that a combination of increased training and safety protocols, technological advancements, safety awareness initiatives and regulatory changes contributed to the reduction in air ambulance accidents.
The helicopter air ambulance industry grew more than 6% a year on average from 2010 to 2020, according to an August 2024 analysis of helicopter air ambulance accidents from 2010 to 2021 for the Air Medical Journal.
By 2023, 1,315 helicopters were performing air ambulance services across the country logging more than 226,000 flight hours and transporting nearly 386,400 patients, according to the FAA.
“The (helicopter air ambulance) industry is expanding,” the Air Medical Journal study read. However, accidents and incidents involving helicopter air ambulances “have concerned the aviation community regarding the safety of helicopter air ambulance operations.”
“We don’t often think of the risks the crews face, but they are very real,” Dahle said in the Facebook post. “Prayers for the swift recovery of the team members from REACH Air Medical Services injured in this terrible crash.”
A memorial at Elko, Nevada, Regional Airport stands as a testament to the danger and the medical air crews who lost their lives.
A plaque remembers the five crew and patients aboard an Access Air helicopter, including a mother and her 11-day-old daughter who died in an August 2004 crash on Nevada’s Mt. Tobin; and a deadly November 2016 crash in Elko that killed the twin-engine plane’s pilot, medics and a patient en route to Salt Lake City for open-heart surgery.
The last recorded incident involving a Reach Air-owned craft was a June 2024 incident at Barstow-Daggett Airport in Barstow. Crosswinds pushed a taxiing EC135 air ambulance, causing the pilot to lose control of the helicopter. Four people were aboard. No one was hurt.
Two years earlier, in December 2022, a Reach Air EC130 crash-landed northwest of Yuba City, according to Aviation Safety Network. No one was hurt in the crash, which was caused by a bird strike while the helicopter was en route to Redding from McClellan Park in Sacramento.
Records show more than 100 crashes of EC130s since 2004.
The latest crash of an EC130 was little more than a month ago, on Sept. 2 in Mexico, according to Aviation Safety Network. Two people aboard the Heliamerica Mexico-operated craft were killed when the copter crashed in a volcanic area near the town of Tepetlixpa, in Morelos state, according to the network and news reports.
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