RE: Safety Question?

["Pieter de Weerdt" <pieterdw@safrica.com>]

Some comments....

1.  The issue of hot loads/offloads has been discussed at length previously,
I am all for it as long as:
	- the crews [crews=aircrew and helipad crew] are trained properly.  This,
in my opinion, is not very difficult to do, the key would be maintaining
currency...
	- Standard Operation Policies and Procedures are in place and adhered to at
all time, _no deviations whatsoever_.
	- It is a matter of patient well-being rather than costs... sure we have to
contain costs as much as possible, but that should not be the only/primary
factor in making these decisions...
2.  "ICU nurses with only little helicopter safety and experience" Should
they not be proficient in heli safety before we let them loose on the
unsuspecting public?  My question is, should they be flying at all, never
mind the hot loads and offloads...?
3.  During the previous discussion in this regard I researched the FAA
incident report dbase for incidents involving turning rotors, I will have to
dig the stats up again, and I stand to be corrected, but I seem to recall
the rate of people into rotors for all heli incidents was less than .01% of
all incidents listed for the past ten years, with _no EMS industry incident
reported in this category_.

Regards

Pieter

-----Original Message-----
From: FF2MICP@aol.com [mailto:FF2MICP@aol.com]
Sent: 12 January 2001 01:27
To: flightmed@flightweb.com
Subject: Safety Question?


Would you consider it a standard of the industry to do "HOT UNLOADS" at the
recieving facility, also the helicopters home, with 150 pound isolette.
This
as come up recently at a facility near by.  New helicopter new program and I
am hearing that they want to do hot unloads to reduce the number of engine
starts.  I understand the cost of engine starts, (Bell 407) but we also need
to wory about safety.  By the way the flight crew on the teams consist of
ICU
nurses with only little helicopter safety and experience.

Any information on other facilities doing the same or have had problems with
such please contact directly.

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