The medical helicopter crash in Prince George's County that killed four people last month was one of more than a dozen fatal crashes nationally during the past six years that raise doubts about whether the victims ever needed to leave the ground.
A review by The Baltimore Sun of crash records and other documents on the 26 fatal medevac crashes in the United States since 2003 shows that many did not involve urgent, minutes-from-death missions. At least eight involved patients who waited longer for a helicopter than a ground ambulance might have needed to drive them to a hospital. And at least six were for patients discharged soon after a helicopter dropped them off at a hospital, or who survived a lengthy ambulance ride after the helicopter sent to get them went down.
The recent history of medevac crashes also includes heroic accounts of late-night flights to retrieve critically ill or injured people in foul weather and urgent missions such as transferring a sick woman from an underequipped hospital in rural Alaska or plucking a young hiker with heat stroke off a mountain in Utah. In the wake of last month's deaths, Maryland officials have repeatedly defended the state's 4,500 annual flights as safe and necessary for saving lives, even if some flights appear unnecessary in hindsight.
