Accidents have killed 77 people in six years, including 35 in 2008
By Jon Hilkevitch
The Star-Ledger
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WASHINGTON — Robert Blockinger drives ambulances for a living, and although he was terribly worried about his ill daughter, it never crossed his mind that she would die while being transported from one hospital to another.
Kirstin Blockinger was on the second air-ambulance flight of her 14-month life last fall when the helicopter taking her to a Chicago medical facility crashed in west suburban Aurora, Robert and his wife, Brooke, said Tuesday in their first interview.
“I am very much into the emergency scene, and it has become quite obvious - painfully obvious to my wife and I - that there needs to be changes,” said Robert Blockinger, 24, a military medic specialist who has served in Iraq with the Illinois National Guard. Back home, he drives ambulances for a private company, has been a firefighter in his rural Illinois community since 2000 and plans to begin classes to become a certified paramedic, he said.
The interview took place while the couple attended a hearing investigating widespread safety problems involving emergency medical helicopters, which last year had the worst fatal accident rate among all types of aviation, according to testimony presented at the hearing conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board.
At least 77 people have died in 85 medical helicopter accidents in the last six years, safety board member Robert Sumwalt said. Last year was the deadliest year on record with 35 fatalities.
The Blockingers’ “new mission in life” is to make the industry safer, they said.
“We are not out to put anyone out of business,” Robert Blockinger said. “But while we have lost all that we could ever lose, we want everyone else’s children to be safe. There is a lot that can be done to minimize the risk.”
Kirstin, who had infantile spasms that led to seizures, and the three crew members on the flight operated by Air Angels Inc. died last Oct. 15 after the helicopter struck a radio tower in an accident investigators have tentatively attributed to pilot error.
The Blockingers, from Leland, Ill., have filed a negligence lawsuit against Air Angels, Reach Medical Holdings Inc., the parent company, and the estate of pilot Delbert Waugh.
The couple said they traveled to Washington in the hope that the four-day NTSB hearing would raise public awareness. They want it to lead to improvements in safety procedures throughout the quickly growing emergency medical helicopter industry. They want the Federal Aviation Administration to require companies to enhance pilot training and assign two pilots to every flight, conduct more intensive pre-flight risk assessments and equip copters with new collision-avoidance technology and night-vision goggles to prevent accidents.
Officials at the trade organization that represents medical helicopters said that despite a culture dictating that safety comes first, accidents are occurring at a troublesome rate - roughly 2 fatal accidents for every 100,000 hours of flight in 2008. U.S. commercial air carriers, by comparison, have not suffered a fatal accident in more than two years.
Legislation pending in Congress would tighten the regulation of the medical helicopter industry, putting it closer to the requirements that airlines and other commercial operators must meet. The FAA maintains that voluntary compliance has boosted safety by helicopter operators, although FAA officials acknowledge there is still a lot of room for improvement.
“All we are saying is that while rule-making is one way to do things, it is not the only way,” FAA spokesman Les Dorr said.
Improving the safety record is vital in light of a doubling of the number of emergency medical helicopters over the last 10 years, to more than 830 aircraft in service today, Ira Blumen, medical director of the University of Chicago Hospitals Aeromedical Network, told the safety board. He said that medical helicopters began operating in the United States in 1972 and that 55 percent of all crashes have occurred since 1998.
“We have the ability to save lives, but unfortunately we also have the ability to take lives,” Blumen said.