Shortly after the two medical crewmembers in a Eurocopter AS350 B2 saw trees beneath the helicopter during a dark night flight in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and told the pilot to “pull up,” he told them he planned to divert to another airport. Then he began a left turn that ended in the emergency medical services (EMS) helicopter’s crash into trees and terrain.
The pilot was killed in the March 12, 2015, crash in Eufaula, Oklahoma, U.S., and the flight nurse and emergency medical technician (EMT) received serious injuries. The helicopter, owned and operated by EagleMed, was destroyed.
In its final report, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said the probable cause of the accident was the “inadvertent encounter with night instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the pilot turning the helicopter and subsequently descending into trees and terrain due to spatial disorientation.”
The accident occurred during a positioning flight ba…
