An EagleMed crash that killed one and injured two was the third fatal EagleMed crash in three years, and has prompted calls for the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate the company.
Tuesday night’s EagleMed crash occurred in Southeastern Oklahoma, in the vicinity of the Choctaw Nation Healthcare Center in Talihina.
A local news source reports that the Commission on Accrediation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS) has suspended EagleMed’s accreditation, but some say further action is needed to prevent future tragedies.
In Tuesday’s EagleMed crash, the patient being transported was killed, and aviation attorney and pilot Ladd Sanger says the FAA needs to take a firmer stance in the wake of the EagleMed accident:
“This many crashes in this short period of time is indicative of a serious problem from an operational standpoint … That is going to have to get rectified, or this company is going to continue to put innocent people’s lives in jeopardy.”
The FAA along with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the EagleMed crash, and the company says they are cooperating with both agencies to determine what happened to precipitate the accident.
But Sanger calls for the FAA to suspend EagleMed’s air carrier certificate, and Choctaw Nation Healthcare Center spokeswoman Janet Sharp confirms that the copter carrying the patient, a nurse, a paramedic, and a pilot “lost power and caught on fire when it hit the ground” at around 6:30 PM local time Tuesday.
The patient killed in the deadly EagleMed crash was identified as 49-year-old Michael David Wilson of Bethel.
In February, an EagleMed crash in Oklahoma City killed two people and seriously injured two others, and no cause for that fatal accident has yet been confirmed. Two people also died in a 2010 EagleMed crash, also in Oklahoma.
