Accidents
Air Methods, as of 2006, has had a total of 19 accidents. Following a 2006 accident Craig Yale, the vice president of corporate development for Air Methods, stated in a news conference shortly after the accident that, "We fly over 100,000 hours a year, 85,000 missions a year, and in doing so have had very few fatal accidents over a 10-year period."
- In January 2005, an Air Methods helicopter crashed in Washington, D.C. with two dead and one injured, and another crashed in Mississippi killing one.
- On December 10, 2006 in the 2006 Mercy Air helicopter accident three were killed in a crash a Cajon Pass, California.
- On June 29, 2008, a Bell 407 medical helicopter operated by Air Methods collided with another medical helicopter in Arizona, killing six of the seven aboard both aircraft. Another Air Methods helicopter crashed in May in Wisconsin soon after taking off; three people were killed in that accident: the pilot, flight doctor and flight nurse.
- On July 28, 2010, LifeNet 12, a Eurocopter AS350 B3 crashed in Tucson Arizona killing all 3 crewmembers aboard. LifeNet 12 based out of Douglas Arizona was en route back to Douglas from Marana Arizona. Witnesses describe the helicopter losing power in flight crashing into the street below. It appears from witnesses that the pilot was able to steer the aircraft away from landing into a house nearby.
- On August 26, 2011 four people (3 crew members and 1 patient) were killed when a LifeNet Eurocopter AS350 based at Rosecrans Airport and connected to Heartland Hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri crashed near Liberty, Missouri. Initial crash reports indicated it had run out of fuel. The helicopter had traveled 45 miles from St. Joseph to Harrison County Community Hospital in Bethany, Missouri to pick up a patient. It did not refuel before traveling another 70 miles en route to its intended destination at Liberty Hospital. It was reported to be within a mile of landing for fuel at Midwest National Air Center in Mosby, Missouri (near Liberty) when it crashed.
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Famous quotes containing the word accidents:
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)