Medevac Flight Research for a Novel

[Tropic]

Here's a link to a 1993 article that mentions inaccurate weather forecasts as an issue in flights. From the posts here, it still sounds like this could have been a major issue in the late 1990's. The article also mentions another safety issue: pressure placed on the pilot to get to the patient and transport the patient asap. Interesting article in light of the information provided in this forum.

 

https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/directline/dl6_ems.htm

 

The NTSB found that in-flight encounters with weather at low altitude were the single most common factor in fatal EMS accidents, with most accidents occurring at night. All 15 in-flight weather-related accidents occurred at low-altitude and in uncontrolled airspace, and 10 of those occurred at cruise speed. In the ASRS study, in-flight weather encounters were cited in 14 percent of the reports. Pre-flight weather briefings had been obtained in 80 percent of these incidents, but 75 percent of the briefings did not match the actual weather conditions the pilots encountered. The captain of a 2-pilot crew, both IFR-rated and current, flying an IFR-certified aircraft, described the potential hazards of inaccurate weather forecasts:

• "The biggest safety problem I see is lack of accurate weather forecasting from a facility with weather reporting. This is the third time I have been inbound with a patient and have been caught by unforecast weather conditions--not just a little off, but all the way from VFR to low IFR. The last time this happened they reported clear and 10 (miles visibility) when in fact they were 300 (ft ceiling) and 1/2 (mile visibility), and went to 0-0 within an hour. Unexpected IFR or IMC can cause confusion and possibly even an accident with an experienced crew, much less an inexperienced pilot in a VFR small aircraft." (ACN 138253)

 

 

[brian74]

^^^^^Read post above. My most oh sh*t situation involved piss poor weather breifing prior to the flight. We were on our return leg after flying south. The storm was predicted to move north. We were going to fly north, but we would easily remain just east of the bad weather, based on our brief. We mitigated by picking an airport halfway up the route to land at and wait it out if it did get rough, based on the weather briefer's advice. We had to make a decision to take off soon, because there was also bad weather behind us. The storm behind us was fast approaching, so we picked an enroute mountain in the distance to guage our visibility for runup & departure. We took off, got 2/3'rds of the way up our route, and suddenly hit a wall of storms. That storm moved east right in front of our path, instead of north as briefed. 600ft ceilings initially, and our route had us flying right through the middle of it. We stopped short of the storm and flew a circle while we evaluated and discussed the situation. AWOS at our safety airport was calling 300 ft and broken and even that was further north into the storm then we wanted to go. We couldnt call FSS and file IFR because going up through those clouds to 6000 feet to be on ATC radar would have put us into icing. We couldn't turn back either because there was that storm behind us. I pulled out my phone and looked at my weather radar app. If we went due west, we would be able to tuck out under the tail end of the storm. We decided on that. We dipped down to 300 feet AGL, turned west and crawled along at 40-60 kts. and flew under the clouds into a known valley, navigating towards the storm tail with my cell phone weather app. OAT gauge was reading 6 degrees and we had nearly 2 hours of fuel left with less than an hour required. We were 2 up in an empty aircraft with adequate OGE hover margin. Vis was in between 1/4 and 1 mile. VARTOMS was cycling on and off with our prudent airspeed. After 20 minutes of pushing west, were on the very edge of breaking through the storm and visibility just dropped below our comfort level altogether. We made the decision to turn around and land at a private airstrip we flew over earlier. We made it back to the airstrip. The airstrip owner even came out and greeted us with coffee. 5 minutes later, I looked west and saw blue skies; as that storm passed. The vis had only decreased earlier suddenly because we were just about to fly through the tail end of the storm. We ran back up and took off. Blue skies the rest of the way home. Had I not had that weather radar app on my phone, we would have been f*cked.

 

I now have the nickname RADAR. It is our responsibility as pilots to learn and understand the unpredictability of weather and use the resources available to us. As far as weather briefings and forecasts are concerned, I go through the legal motions of getting the brief, but never once will I solely trust a forecaster's brief if I think the weather is questionable.

 

The HEMS guys work under a lot more pressure, fly with narrower power margins with less fuel, and have far less time to make those kinds of decisions. Its truly a skill, and I'd assume much luck at times.