The founder and president of a charter operation succumbed to self-induced pressure to complete the flight of a Mayo Clinic doctor to procure a heart for transplant when he flew his Bell 206B into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and crashed, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says.
The pilot, the doctor and a medical technician were killed when the helicopter struck the ground near Green Cove Springs, Florida, at 0554 local time on Dec. 26, 2011.
In its final report on the accident, the NTSB attributed the crash to “the pilot’s improper decision to continue visual flight into night [IMC], which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.”
The report cited as a contributing factor the pilot’s self-induced pressure, which stemmed largely from millions of dollars in financial losses related to the downturn in the national economy and the knowledge that the Mayo Clinic — his largest customer — had been “identifying other aviation companies that…
