Never Again: Where are the towers?

Weather was ceiling and visibility unlimited (CAVU), with a temperature-dewpoint spread of 4 degrees. Since it would be just a 15-minute flight, I assumed the mission would be easy, and that I’d be back to the hospital in an hour or less. I leveled off, cleaned up the cockpit, and set off on another routine flight. It turned out to be one of the longest nights of my career.

I landed at the farmhouse, and the nurses zipped inside to tend to their patient. I stayed with the aircraft, assuming they’d be back soon, we’d load the patient aboard and quickly fly him away. Shortly after I landed the slight breeze died, and the air became utterly still. After 30 minutes with no patient, I looked to the west. A tall radio tower that I’d passed on the way to the scene was no longer visible. At first I thought the lights had gone out, that after midnight those lights automatically extinguished or something. That was not the reason I couldn’t see them.

After I’d been on the ground an hour, still with no patient to fly, I felt a chill mist in the air. Looking straight up I saw that the stars had disappeared. Fog was forming. I walked into the house, where the flight nurses were still bent over the old farmer, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in progress. There were medical supplies scattered around on the floor, and no sign that the medical crew was ready to leave. I beckoned to one of my crew, telling him that weather was closing in. He assured me they’d be back to the helicopter shortly, so I returned to the aircraft.

Another half hour went by. Finally, the patient and my crew came out, and we loaded the man inside. I buttoned up the aircraft, started the engine, and took off at 1 a.m., hoping visibility wasn’t as bad as it appeared to be from the ground.

It was worse. As I leveled off at 400 feet, dense billows of fog rolled past the aircraft. I eased the airspeed back to 60 knots, 50, 40. At one point I slowed a bit too much, and the airspeed needle dropped below 30 knots, bouncing close to zero. If it went to zero and stayed there, I would have had no idea if I was moving forward, sideways, or backward. Luckily, the needle climbed back to 30 knots, showing I had forward airspeed.

An aviation adage says that if it’s bad on the ground it will only get worse in the air. Well, things got worse quickly. When the crew loaded the patient that night, they’d inadvertently banged the patient cot against the defrost knob, jamming it tight. Then, as they pumped the man’s chest, their sweaty exertions inside the cabin caused the windows of the aircraft to steam up. I tried cranking the defog valve open, but the knob wouldn’t budge. So, I kicked the aircraft out of trim, and opened the side vent at my right shoulder to get some fresh air into the cabin. Nearly hovering along, crabbing sideways in the murky night, I peered ahead hoping to break out and see something I recognized.

Then I remembered the radio tower. It was somewhere between me and the hospital, somewhere close by. I had no idea where, nor did I know where its massive guy wires were. I continued with the heading I thought would keep me clear, staring ahead, looking for red lights in the fog.

The nearby ATC facility was closed for the night, so radar wasn’t available. I was 400 feet off the ground, nearly hovering from farm light to farm light, with the medical team doing CPR on the patient beside me, and oblivious to the danger they were in.

After what seemed an eternity the hazy lights of Iowa City shimmered in the fog ahead. I steered toward the hospital, landed, and vowed to never put myself in that position again. I envisioned the subsequent reports of the crash, and the fog, and the loss of control, and the inevitable finger pointing and shaking heads as yet another air medical helicopter crashed, with four fatalities. People talk about their lives flashing in front of them. I could see the headlines with my name in them.

My alternatives that night were limited, but they were available, if only I’d used them. I could have left the team with the patient, insisting that they use the ground ambulance instead, and flown home. I could have climbed and radioed a distress call to any open air traffic control (ATC) resource. I could have landed right away when I noticed the extent of the fog. In other words, I had options; I chose not to use them. Sadly, the patient later died.

At the time, I was a member of the Iowa National Guard, assigned as one of the unit’s instrument flight examiners. I had many hours of weather time, so the fog itself didn’t elicit panic, or distract me from the immediate task of flying the aircraft. Loss of control can happen within 30 seconds of inadvertent entry into instrument meteorological conditions. Pilots lacking the skills and confidence to fly on instruments are naturally more vulnerable.

My instrument flying skills were excellent. But the helicopter I was flying that night wasn’t equipped for instrument flight. It had a single artificial horizon; a crude turn and bank indicator; one generator that, fortunately, didn’t fail; and no GPS or night vision equipment like many cockpits have now. So, the lack of proper navigation equipment in that helicopter added to my burden.

I was fortunate on that foggy night. After landing, I literally kissed the helipad. The error chain in my flight in the fog was one, assuming that weather would hold; two, a false belief that the medical team would expedite with the patient; three, my haste with pre-takeoff preparations; four, a takeoff with no weather report; five, a lack of orientation to obstacles in my flight path. AOPA

This article is excerpted from Byron Edgington’s forthcoming book, Postflight: An Old Pilot’s Notes.