A properly run safety management system (SMS) could have prevented the Jan. 29, 2019, fatal crash of a Bell 407 air ambulance, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said, citing the operator’s “inadequate management of safety” as the probable cause of the accident.
The crash of Survival Flight’s air ambulance, on a snowy morning 4 mi (6 km) northeast of Zaleski, Ohio, U.S., killed the pilot, flight paramedic and flight nurse, and destroyed the helicopter. [Photo courtesy of The Columbus Dispatch via NTSB]
In its final report, released in May, the NTSB elaborated on the probable cause: the operator’s “inadequate management of safety, which normalized pilots’ and operations control specialists’ noncompliance with risk analysis procedures and resulted in the initiation of the flight without a comprehensive preflight weather evaluation, leading to the pilot’s inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions, failure to maintain altitude…
