Lots of dots to connect in this story
And the implications are SCARY!!
The three occupants of a twin-engine air ambulance died when their plane crashed late Thursday night north of 11,676-foot Charleys Peak in far eastern Archuleta County.
The plane, a Beech King Air C-90A, was on its way from Chinle, Ariz., to Alamosa to pick up a patient, according to the Civil Air Patrol. Flight controllers lost radar and radio contact with the plane at 11:22 p.m. Thursday when it was about 20 miles southwest of Alamosa.
The names of the victims were not immediately available. They were a pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic, all from Blanding, Utah.
An Archuleta County Sheriff's Department release said a Black Hawk helicopter with one rescuer landed 200 meters down-slope from the wreckage, which was located just outside the South San Juan Wilderness. One body was recovered and flown to the Alamosa County coroner's office. Two other bodies were found later near the wreckage.
Only one rescuer could ride the helicopter because of treacherous conditions - high altitude, high wind, low visibility and thunderstorms, the sheriff's department's release said.
Fog and high wind prevented the search from beginning Thursday.
Lt. Steve Hamilton, the statewide public-affairs officer for the Civil Air Patrol, said crew members of a V-22 Osprey from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico spotted the wreckage about 1:30 p.m. Friday.
Hamilton said two Civil Air Patrol ground teams, one from Alamosa, the other from Durango, with three to seven members each, were dispatched to the area. In addition to the Black Hawk, two Civil Air Patrol aircraft were dispatched to the area, Hamilton said.
Maj. John Frye, the Civil Air Patrol group commander in Southwest Colorado, said he was notified about the crash around 6 a.m. A Cessna 182 based in Durango and a similar craft based in Cortez, each with a three-member crew, were alerted.
The Cessna crew from Cortez circled, away from the crash site, relaying information between a C-130 aircraft from Albuquerque that remained high above the crash site coordinating air activities and himself at Durango La Plata County Airport, Frye said.
John Weiss, undersheriff of Archuleta County, said his office mobilized forces Friday morning. Ground crews from Upper San Juan Search and Rescue and Colorado Mounted Search and Rescue were ready for deployment, Weiss said.
No sheriff's deputies were involved in the effort.
The Beech King Air is registered to Scenic Aviation Inc. of Blanding, which operates an air ambulance service called Eagle Air Med Inc.
An employee who answered at Eagle Air Med said the company was preparing a news release.
See also:and also see:
3 dead in air ambulance crash
Which includes this "bit":Since 1987, Eagle Air Med's parent company Scenic Aviation Inc. has addressed 24 violations of FAA regulations, Gregor said. The enforcements include record keeping, maintenance, drug testing and flight operations, according to FAA records.
In The News:
Overview
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is the first aircraft designed from the ground up to meet the needs of the Defense Department's four U.S. armed services. The tiltrotor aircraft takes off and lands like a helicopter. Once airborne, its engine nacelles can be rotated to convert the aircraft to a turboprop airplane capable of high-speed, high-altitude flight.
The V-22 Osprey provides unique capabilities offering:
- increased speed because it's twice as fast as a helicopter.
- much longer range resulting in greater mission versatility than a helicopter.
- multi-mission capability: amphibious assault, combat support, long-range special ops infiltration and exfiltration, transport, search and rescue, medevac, and, in the future, tanker capability.
The V-22 Osprey aircr
aft:
- can transport 24 combat troops or up to 20,000 pounds of internal or external cargo using its medium lift and vertical takeoff and landing capabilities
- meets U.S. Navy requirements for combat search and rescue, fleet logistics support, and special warfare support
- matches the U.S. Special Operati ons Command's requirement for a high-speed, long-range, vertical lift aircraft
- can be stored aboard an aircraft carrier because the rotors can fold and the wing rotate
- has air-to-air refueling capability, the cornerstone of the ability to self-deploy
Boeing is responsible for the fuselage and all subsystems, digital avionics, and fly-by-wire flight-control systems. Boeing partner Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., is responsible for the wing, transmissions, empennage, rotor systems and engine installation.
The V-22 provides a significant increase in operational range over the legacy systems it will replace and is the only vertical platform capable of rapid self-deployment to any theater of operation worldwide.
For more information, read the V-22
Osprey (PDF) overview.
More on Scenic AviationScenic Aviation: (they claim they merely acquire contractors in lawsuits against them)
Federal officials and representatives of Cessna and Teledyne Continental Motors examine the wreckage of a twin-engine Cessna 414A airplane that crashed in a parking lot at BMW of Maui in Kahului, killing three Hawaii residents.
Crash blame lands on pilot
Air Ambulance now provides its fliers with more extensive training
and this is related somehow:http://www.readitnews.com/content/view/557/10025/
and yet one MORE dot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embry-Riddle_Aeronautical_University
Information on Tom Perkins, Sr. is not surprisingly not very forthcoming via google, anyway.
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