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A Bayflite helicopter pilot loses one engine, then another. Landing drills help him pull through it safely.
By CANDACE RONDEAUX, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 28, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- Bayflite helicopter pilot Amund Moe has logged 7,000 hours in the air, but he'd never experienced anything like what happened Monday night.
Fifty minutes into a trip ferrying an infant and a medical crew from Naples to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, lights flashed and alarms screamed of an engine failure.
"My cockpit was lit up like a Christmas tree," Moe said Tuesday.
With engines ablaze, Moe executed a lightning fast 180-degree turn, called out a mayday to flight controllers at Bayfront Medical Center's helipad and set his sights on the closest flat surface, a stretch of Interstate 275 just south of the Sunshine Skyway bridge.
"I looked and saw the Skyway. And it just so happened that there was no traffic on the 275 at that moment, so I landed the helicopter there," Moe said. "Someone was looking over us up there."
No one was injured, and the infant was in good condition Tuesday.
What caused the engine to explode was not known Tuesday.
The type of helicopter used by Bayflite and many other emergency medical services, the German-made, twin-engine BK 117, is popular among helicopter EMS companies across the nation.
It has been involved in at least 10 serious accidents since 1997, five of them involving fatalities. But an expert said there was no reason to be concerned about safety.
"It's a very rugged aircraft," said Gary Campbell, president of the National EMS Pilot's Association.
Moe, 34, has been an air ambulance pilot for 14 years. He said his training got him through Monday's harrowing experience.
Twice a year trainers from Rocky Mountain Holdings, the Utah-based company that manages Bayflite's EMS helicopter fleet, tests Moe and the fleet's 12 other pilots on emergency landings.
Moe, flight nurse June Poxson and All Children's Hospital medical staffers Diane Ludes and Kevin Lockwood were flying at about 1,000 feet when things started to go wrong.
"We heard a loud bang on the right side of the aircraft, and the warning lights started to go off," Moe said.
The controls indicated an explosion in the first engine. Moe said he did what he was trained to do -- look for a place to land. Then the second engine failed.
Moe never saw the stream of black smoke trailing the helicopter's tail. Once on the ground, after the crew had carried the infant to safety, he borrowed a fire extinguisher from a truck driver who had stopped to help. Firefighters arrived, and the fire was put out.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating, said FAA spokesman Christopher White.
John Lovell, an air safety investigator with the NTSB's Miami office, said the helicopter will be taken to Tampa Bay Executive Airport and examined.
"It's premature to know what happened at this time," he said.
In 1990, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive ordering BK 117 owners to modify the fuel systems, "to prevent uncontrolled fuel vapor ignition, which could result in an explosion, fire and the subsequent loss of the helicopter."
While not an official "grounding," most of the BK 117s worldwide stopped flying for a time in 1999 when the FAA and German officials issued emergency directives ordering the replacement of tension torsion straps. The straps are bundles of 12,000 tightly wound wires, sheathed in plastic, that hold the main rotor blades on the rotor hub.
The order followed a crash of a hospital-owned BK 117 in Houston, an accident that killed three people.
In April 2000, another BK 117 flown by Bayflite crashed near the Gandy Bridge after hitting a support wire on a radio tower. All three crew members aboard were killed.
Pilot error was cited as the main cause of that accident.
Last month, the widow of a Nebraska EMS helicopter pilot killed with two other crew members in a June 2002 crash filed a lawsuit against LifeNet, a Rocky Mountain Holdings subsidiary, the same company that manages Bayflite's fleet.
The lawsuit alleged that Rocky Mountain and Eurocopter S.A., the helicopter's manufacturer, had been negligent in the design, management and maintenance of the aircraft in that fatal crash.
"We don't know what happened with that aircraft," Dan Woods, Rocky Mountain's director of maintenance said of the Nebraska crash. "The NTSB still has not made a ruling."
Four of Bayflite's BK 117s are in service at any given time. Bayflite officials said they have replaced the downed helicopter with another BK 117 and will continue to use the model in its fleet.
-- Times staff writer Jean Heller and researchers Cathy Wos and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.