By David Wahlberg
The Wisconsin State Journal
LA CROSSE, Wisc. — The University of Wisconsin Hospital Med Flight pilot who died with two others in a crash near La Crosse last May couldn’t use instruments to navigate through the foggy night because his helicopter company hadn’t trained him to do so, though he had been approved before by another company.
Records show that Steve Lipperer had been certified to use instrument flight rules during bad weather by CJ Systems, from which Med Flight leased its two choppers until Denver-based Air Methods acquired CJ in October 2007.
But Air Methods didn’t recertify Lipperer or other Med Flight pilots before the May 10 crash, so he wasn’t able to fly by instruments on a night so foggy that other medical helicopter services in the area turned down flights. He used visual flight rules, or VFR.
The finding is revealed in documents released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board. It raises questions because the poor conditions would have led many pilots to use instrument flight rules, or IFR, said Jeff Baum, president of Wisconsin Aviation, a flight service based in Watertown.
“He certainly would have been much better off going by IFR,” Baum said.
Craig Yale, spokesman for Air Methods, said the conditions on the night of the crash allowed for visual navigation. All Med Flight pilots, who are employed by Air Methods, were recertified to fly by instruments shortly after the incident, he said.
“It would have been very unlikely (Lipperer) would have filed an IFR flight plan even had that training been available,” Yale said. “If he felt that he needed that IFR option to go, he should not have taken off.”
IFR ability preferred
According to the NTSB, the weather on the night of May 10 was appropriate for “marginal visual flight rules.” That means instruments weren’t required but conditions were worse than preferred for visual navigation, the agency said.
Yale said Med Flight is among less than a fifth of Air Methods’ medical helicopter customers equipped to fly by instruments. Services that don’t have the capability generally don’t fly when conditions call for IFR.
The UW Hospital emergency service, which started in 1985, was one of four test sites to pioneer the use of GPS technology to enable helicopters to fly by instruments using helipads in the early ‘90s, said Steve Hickok, who owns an aviation company in Alabama. He was with the Federal Aviation Administration at the time.
Dr. Ryan Wubben, Med Flight’s interim medical director, said “we would have preferred, if we could have snapped our fingers overnight, to have always had the IFR capability.”
But “it’s hard to speculate whether it would have changed anything,” Wubben said.
Seven Med Flight physicians have chosen not to fly since the crash, while four others have joined the service, Wubben said.
Killed in the incident were Lipperer, 39; Dr. Darren Bean, 37; and nurse Mark Coyne, 53.
The men left Madison about 8:30 p.m. to pick up an 86-year-old patient in Prairie du Chien and deliver her to Gundersen Lutheran Hospital in La Crosse because its helicopter was busy. The patient died a few hours later.
After stopping at the La Crosse airport to refuel, the crew took off for Madison at 10:34 p.m. The wreckage was found about 9 a.m. the next day at the top of a wooded ridge about 4.5 miles southeast of the airport.
Training scheduled
Jason Quisling, a Madison-based certificate compliance evaluator for Air Methods, told an NTSB investigator that Lipperer “was a fully rated helicopter pilot with instrument capabilities,” according to a summary of his conversation with the investigator.
Quisling said Lipperer “was a conservative pilot and used good judgment.”
Though Air Methods acquired CJ in October 2007, the switch didn’t fully take place until March 2008, Quisling said.
“At that time, the company (Air Methods) made the decision to bring the former CJ Systems pilots onto their certificate as VFR only, initially,” Quisling said. “Mr. Lipperer would have been scheduled for his IFR checkride in March, but since Air Methods was bringing the ‘new’ pilots on initially with VFR ratings only, that checkride did not occur.”
Medical helicopter crews in Eau Claire and La Crosse turned down and halted flights in the hours before the Med Flight crash, according to other NTSB documents.
The helicopter that crashed didn’t have two pieces of safety equipment recommended by the NTSB: night-vision goggles and a terrain warning system, which can alert pilots before an impact.
Air Methods has been upgrading its fleet with the equipment at a cost of about $100,000 each.
Med Flight’s remaining permanent helicopter, also leased from Air Methods, is scheduled to receive the equipment next month. Med Flight also has been using an aircraft on loan from Air Methods. It has the equipment.