AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2021 - 100

P&E 

NEVER AGAIN

Where are
the towers?
Rescue flight gone wrong
B Y B Y R O N E D G I N GTO N

100 | AOPA PILOT June 2021

after I landed the slight breeze died, and
the air became utterly still. After 30 minutes with no patient, I looked to the west. A
tall radio tower that I'd passed on the way
to the scene was no longer visible. At first I
thought the lights had gone out, that after
midnight those lights automatically extinguished or something. That was not the
reason I couldn't see them.
After I'd been on the ground an hour,
still with no patient to fly, I felt a chill mist
in the air. Looking straight up I saw that the
stars had disappeared. Fog was forming. I
walked into the house, where the flight
nurses were still bent over the old farmer,
cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in
progress. There were medical supplies
scattered around on the floor, and no sign
that the medical crew was ready to leave.
I beckoned to one of my crew, telling him

ANNA MILL

I'D LEFT THE HOSPITAL HELIPAD at 11 p.m.
on a balmy November night to rescue a
heart attack patient. Local emergency
medical technicians (EMTs) had called for
our Airbus Helicopters H125 to meet them
at the patient's farmhouse, 25 miles away.
Weather was ceiling and visibility unlimited (CAVU), with a temperature-dewpoint
spread of 4 degrees. Since it would be just
a 15-minute flight, I assumed the mission would be easy, and that I'd be back
to the hospital in an hour or less. I leveled
off, cleaned up the cockpit, and set off on
another routine flight. It turned out to be
one of the longest nights of my career.
I landed at the farmhouse, and the
nurses zipped inside to tend to their
patient. I stayed with the aircraft, assuming
they'd be back soon, we'd load the patient
aboard and quickly fly him away. Shortly

that weather was closing in. He assured me
they'd be back to the helicopter shortly, so
I returned to the aircraft.
Another half hour went by. Finally, the
patient and my crew came out, and we
loaded the man inside. I buttoned up the
aircraft, started the engine, and took off at
1 a.m., hoping visibility wasn't as bad as it
appeared to be from the ground.
It was worse. As I leveled off at 400 feet,
dense billows of fog rolled past the aircraft.
I eased the airspeed back to 60 knots, 50,
40. At one point I slowed a bit too much,
and the airspeed needle dropped below 30
knots, bouncing close to zero. If it went to
zero and stayed there, I would have had no
idea if I was moving forward, sideways, or
backward. Luckily, the needle climbed back
to 30 knots, showing I had forward airspeed.
An aviation adage says that if it's bad
on the ground it will only get worse in the
air. Well, things got worse quickly. When
the crew loaded the patient that night,
they'd inadvertently banged the patient
cot against the defrost knob, jamming it
tight. Then, as they pumped the man's
chest, their sweaty exertions inside the
cabin caused the windows of the aircraft to
steam up. I tried cranking the defog valve
open, but the knob wouldn't budge. So, I
kicked the aircraft out of trim, and opened
the side vent at my right shoulder to get
some fresh air into the cabin. Nearly hovering along, crabbing sideways in the murky
night, I peered ahead hoping to break out
and see something I recognized.
Then I remembered the radio tower. It
was somewhere between me and the hospital, somewhere close by. I had no idea
where, nor did I know where its massive
guy wires were. I continued with the heading I thought would keep me clear, staring
ahead, looking for red lights in the fog.
The nearby ATC facility was closed for
the night, so radar wasn't available. I was
400 feet off the ground, nearly hovering
from farm light to farm light, with the medical team doing CPR on the patient beside
me, and oblivious to the danger they were in.
After what seemed an eternity the
hazy lights of Iowa City shimmered in the
fog ahead. I steered toward the hospital,
landed, and vowed to never put myself
in that position again. I envisioned the
AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2021

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