By MARK MORRIS, BRAD COOPER and ROBERT A. CRONKLETON
The Kansas City Star
National Transportation Safety Board officials said Saturday that they would investigate the fuel level a medical helicopter had before it crashed and killed all four people onboard.
The helicopter crash near Mosby in Clay County is the latest in a string of air ambulance crashes that have been increasing as the business spreads rapidly across the country.
The Eurocopter AS-350 crashed into a grassy field near Cameron Road and Northeast 146th Street about 7 p.m. Friday.
The three medical transport employees were identified as Randy Bever, 47, a flight nurse from Savannah, Mo.; Chris Frakes, 36, a flight paramedic from Savannah; and James Freudenberg, 34, the pilot, from Rapid City, S.D.
Clay County officials identified the fourth victim, a patient being transferred to Liberty Hospital, as Terry Tacoronte of Colorado.
Tacoronte’s husband, Victor Tacoronte, told the St. Joseph News-Press that law enforcement had informed him that the helicopter had exhausted its fuel.
“They confirmed the guy ran out of gas,” Tacoronte said. “They took me in a little room and told me a helicopter went down.”
Craig Yale, a vice president of Air Methods, the parent company of LifeNet, the helicopter’s operator, said that because of the federal investigation he could not speak about conditions that may have led to the accident.
“I would ask that people be patient and let the (Federal Aviation Administration) and the NTSB do their investigation,” Yale said. “It’s important that we not jump to conclusions.”
Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the NTSB, said investigators didn’t have information on how much fuel the helicopter had remaining before the crash.
“That is one of the things we’ll be looking at, the level of fuel,” Knudson said. “We don’t know (that it was a factor), but that’s something we’re going to check.”
The aircraft, based in St. Joseph, was headed to Liberty Hospital from a hospital in Bethany, Mo., when the pilot indicated he planned to stop for fuel at the Midwest National Air Center near Excelsior Springs, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the FAA, in an email.
The helicopter crashed about a mile from the airport, he said.
Last year, there were at least 12 emergency helicopter crashes, including six that claimed the lives of a total of 16 crew members, according to the NTSB. It’s been almost a year since the last fatal crash occurred, in Scotland, Ark.
Air Methods, which says it is the largest air medical emergency transport company in the country, has had 14 other incidents and accidents since May 2008, including nine fatalities.
The fatal accident rate for ambulance helicopters is 1.18 per 100,000 hours of service, according to the FAA.
Yale said his firm’s accident rate is 0.6 per 100,000 hours.
The country saw a record number of emergency helicopter crashes in 2008, when there were a dozen crashes killing a total of 29 people.
That spate of crashes prompted the NTSB to call for safety improvements, including the installation of autopilot systems for single pilots, technology for alerting pilots to changes in terrain, and requiring pilots to wear night-vision goggles.
The FAA is developing new safety rules for an industry that’s been criticized for not being sufficiently regulated by the government as it grows.
Ten years ago, there were an estimated 300 ambulance helicopters nationwide. Now there are believed to be more than 800, a growth spurt that experts say was fueled by increases in Medicare reimbursements.
U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Olympia Snowe of Maine introduced a bill last month to tie Medicare reimbursements to national safety standards for air ambulances. They want to restructure Medicare reimbursements so they ensure there’s an incentive for helicopter operators to make safety improvements.
Yale said the helicopter that crashed was equipped with night-vision goggles, a cockpit satellite weather reporting system, modern instrumentation and a flight tracking system that sent an electronic “ping” to the company every 30 seconds while in the air.
Knudson said investigators know of no one who heard or saw the crash. Nor was there any known contact with air traffic controllers before it crashed in the field, he said.
The investigation and report into the crash could take up to 12 months to complete, although a preliminary report could be released in 10 days but will not state the crash’s cause.
Yale said the deaths are a tremendous blow.
“It hurts,” Yale said. “We’re a fairly big company, but we’re a fairly small community. This is our family, and we have great compassion and concern for the families and for our patient.”
Freudenberg, the pilot, joined the company in 2010 after flying for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.
Freudenberg had 2,153 flight hours, most of them in helicopters, Yale said.
Yale said Bever joined the company in 1998 when the helicopter ambulance service started in St. Joseph. Frakes had been with the company since 2006.
The Star’s Glenn E. Rice and Lee Hill Kavanaugh contributed to this report.
