At first glance you might think the stories I filed in Thursday's New York Post and Dallas Morning News are an April Fool's joke, but alas for everyone concerned, what reads like fiction in the newspaper is actually, painfully true. The article profiling American Eagle pilot Timothy Martins in this month's issue of Air Line Pilot magazine by contrast, is not.



In the union's attempt to win back the respect of the flying public, after several high profile events in which pilots performed at less-than-their-best, it began publishing a monthly profile of a pilot nominated for his or her demonstration of the ALPA code of ethics. In episode two, Jan Steenblik, the technical editor of the magazine, has written what can generously be described as the lightest of puff pieces on American Eagle first officer Martins.

The thousand word article is headlined, "Mature Beyond His Years" and discusses Martins' off-hours activities - flying F-16s for the New Jersey National Guard 177th Fighter Wing, firefighting with the New York Fire Department and volunteering at the food pantry in his hometown of Nesconset, N.Y.

I can't speak to the food pantry, but in conversations on Wednesday with the National Guard and the NYFD I was told, "never heard of the guy."

Martins, 24, did attend Dowling College School of Aviation in Long Island, N.Y, but not in 2001 at the age of 16, as reported in the magazine, but 4 years later and he did not graduate.

Whether Martins was misquoted by the author, the victim of some macabre hoax, or engaging in what he thought was harmless disingenuousness with Steenblik, I can't say. Martins did not reply to my email or phone message. But across the vastness of cyberspace and inside the offices of ALPA headquarters, there's a lot of scratching of heads going on.

Oh wait, let me add Dallas to that list. I have been told by folks in the know, that in Dallas, where American Eagle has its corporate office, Martins has been grounded for the time being.

The airline's spokeswoman, Andrea Huguely, won't confirm that, of course, citing employee confidentiality. She told me that Martins has all the required F.A.A. certificates to legally carry fare paying passengers on a part 121 airline.

But this evening in a conversation with Jim Hall, the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board wondered whether having the right F.A.A. tickets was enough.

“Anyone who is charged with a responsibility for transporting the lives of other people safely who is evidently intentionally fabricating or embellishing credentials or falsifying stories, that’s obviously a terrible problem that should be of concern to the airline.”

There's plenty more to ruminate about in this bizarre tale, but I think I'll wait until the first stories run and see what new revelations they prompt.

The crash Thursday morning of an emergency medical helicopter in Tennessee is another tragic reminder of the crisis in medical aviation. Three people were killed when a Eurocopter AS350 operated by Hospital Wing crashed near Brownsville, Tennessee after delivering a patient in Jackson. While the crash happened shortly before 7:00 a.m., the bulk of the flight occurred during what is considered "the backside of the clock" the hours between ten p.m. and six a.m.. This is the most dangerous time to fly by helicopter medivac. Nearly half of all the EMS helicopter crashes take place on the backside of the clock.


This statistic comes from the Comprehensive Medical Aviation Services Database (CMAS) which was compiled by Dr. Patrick Veillette and myself. Fatigue is a pervasive problem in these accidents, according to Dr. Veillette, a commercial pilot and former EMS pilot. The situation seems to be getting worse. "In just the last 8 years there have been 48 accidents that occurred on the back side of the clock."

Reviewing the so-far-incomplete details of the accident, it appears notably and tragically typical. The aircraft had already delivered the patient and was returning to base, there was bad weather in the area and the flight was being conducted under visual flight rules, without the assistance of enhanced visibility instruments. Our database shows these are the consistently reoccurring factors in helicopter medivac accidents.

What's so frustrating is that it is no mystery how to make air ambulances safer. When EMS helicopters are required to carry two pilots and equipment to help them fly in limited-visibility conditions safer flights will result.

Since 1987, nearly half of the EMS helicopter accidents occurred either at night or in weather that obstructed the pilot's vision. Our statistics also show that people are twice as likely to die in limited-visibility accidents as in those occurring in good weather during the day. Considering the layers of risk in reduced-visibility flights, one would expect operators of air ambulances to make sure their aircraft are equipped to fly in these conditions. But only a small portion are equipped with enhanced-visibility systems.

The EMS helicopter industry has boomed from a few hospitals in Colorado in 1972 to a multi-million-dollar business which operated nearly half a million flights in 2009. This phenomenal growth has been based on a disturbing business model; fly the helicopters as inexpensively as possible - meaning one pilot and a minimum of safety equipment - even though these are inherently more hazardous missions. As one EMS pilot told me, "If they knew what I knew, even the nurse and paramedic wouldn't get on board."

In a study of turbine engine airplane accidents, a noted aviation research company Robert E. Breiling Associates of Florida, concluded that single-pilot flights are riskier than those with two pilots. The statistics show the risk of a fatal accident is 3.7 times greater with a single-pilot. In publishing these findings, AOPA Pilot magazine wrote "single-pilot operations create higher workloads and greater demands on pilot skill when the chips are down and stress levels run high."

Flying a helicopter - any helicopter- is not like flying an airplane. The pilot is busy from start to finish. To an already higher workload and often under time pressure the EMS pilot has additional concerns, a 24/7 flight schedule, a lack of a weather information for the route or destination, operations in and out of non standard landing zones including rooftops, highways and parking lots and flights that take them through obstacles and obstructions.

It is this last factor that makes the need for two pilots most obvious. Of the accidents over the past 20 years, one in of three - involved the aircraft hitting something. With the exception of a pilot-check ride in Michigan in May 2007, all the others were operated by a single pilot. Medical helicopters in Canada and air rescues conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard already require two-pilots. What do they know that America's air ambulance operators do not?

When it comes to making air-ambulance flights safer, the elephant in the room is money. Nobody wants to talk about it because to do so would be to puncture the myth that no expense is too high when it comes to rescuing those in need.

Bringing complicated medical equipment and highly trained professionals to the skies is already an expensive undertaking. Most EMS helicopter companies are businesses with bottom lines to consider. Often a hospital contract will go to the company that offers the lowest bid, which is why additional equipment and doubling of pilots is such a hard concept to sell.

It is imperative that the industry equip all EMS helicopters for reduced visibility conditions and put two qualified pilots in the cockpit to fly them. It's expensive. But once again, investigators have been called to the scene of the crash that is a tragic reminder of the alternative.

Read more about medical aviation here.

It's too easy to criticize the Federal Aviation Administration. But this time, I'm glad it's not me who has to make the decision whether to reinstate Northwest Airlines pilots, Timothy Cheney and Richard Cole. The now famous airmen were so focused on their laptops last October that they cruised past their destination, which was Minneapolis, flying on until curious flight attendants called the cockpit, to ask if they'd be landing soon. Only then did the duo realize their error and turn the Airbus 320 - with 144 passengers aboard - back toward the airport.

In a lightning-fast response, less than a week, the FAA revoked the pilots' licenses, action that was certainly influenced by a torrent of worldwide publicity and calls for a congressional hearing to investigate the episode.

Now, the FAA and the pilots, who are represented by the powerful Air Line Pilots Association, have come to an agreement that seems to indicate that Cheney and Cole could one day fly again as commercial airline pilots. The men agreed not to fight the loss of their licenses and later this year they can reapply to the FAA for new certificates according to a story by Andy Pasztor in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

This is one of the rare cases in which notoriously opinionated pilots are ambivalent. None will condone less than 100% attention to task in the cockpit. At the same time, most admit that in the process of monitoring routine flights - lapses happen.

"One of the problems is the automation that exists in an Airbus, and the messages it sends to you when you get to the end of the route," one airline pilot told me. "This event never would have occurred in a round dial cockpit and I don't think people have hit on that factor enough. There's a high level of automation and advanced technology."

It is well-known in safety design that when left to passive monitoring, humans are prone to make errors. This is why airport security personnel, for example, rotate off the screener position to do another more active task, every 30 minutes. In today's automated cockpit, that isn't an option.

Northwest Flight 188 demonstrated that reality - in the process shocking millions of air travelers, who have a much different if not particularly accurate expectation of what goes on in the front of the plane. Add to that, the fact that going "nordo" out of radio contact should have launched a homeland security alert and new concerns about the distracting effect of the personal electronic devices in all sorts of transportation modes and, well, the cliché "perfect storm" does come to mind.

That's why this story ricocheted around the world.

An airline executive suggested that 90% of pilots questioned about Flight 188 would say that Cheney and Cole should be allowed to fly again and a similar percentage of passengers would say just as certainly that they should not.

The FAA has to navigate this gulf. Letting Cheney and Cole return to commercial flying could be a difficult position to justify, should either of these men be involved in a safety event in the future.

Having said that, I'd add that having lived through publicity of Bradgelina proportions, Cheney and Cole are unlikely to be guilty of the sin of complacency. Nor, in fact, will any number of pilots who saw the coverage of flight 188 and thought to themselves, "There but for the grace of God..."

That is a good thing.

Ron Mastro got the call at 7:00pm on Saturday night telling him to be in Greenwich by six Sunday morning. The worst of the March 13th Nor'easter hadn’t hit coastal Connecticut yet, but Mastro a Connecticut Power storm damage assessor from Waterbury understood; the heavy rains and massive winds would leave a path of destruction. Indeed that was the case.




Shortly after eight, a tree fell on a resident of back country Greenwich, killing her and injuring her companion. Emergency workers were delayed in their attempts to reach her because of blocked roads, according to an interview with the police chief David Ridberg in the local paper. "All the access areas were blocked, the officers and EMS had to walk to the scene and it took a while to get there."

By dawn Sunday, Greenwich town leaders declared a state of emergency. Hundreds of trees uprooted in the storm ripped down power lines, smashed through homes and garages and blocked roads. Eighteen thousand people are without power in Greenwich, about the same number in Stamford. Storm sewers backed up causing flooding in the streets and in some homes, too.

The most dramatic damage I saw on my side of town, Old Greenwich, was the towering hemlock that fell across Tomac Road near Innis Arden Golf Course.

As it fell, it sent a cylindrical transformer the size of a beer keg, crashing off the top of a power pole and onto the street. Assessing the damage, around 2:00 this afternoon, Mastro said it would take days to clean up this particular mess.

My friend Chuck Allen had some dramatic moments with the storm in Stamford yesterday afternoon. He took this photo Saturday. Below, he describes what happened. (Sabah is his wife and Khaled is their son.)

Last night Sabah and I were returning home from shopping at about 3:30 - driving north on Westover Rd. We encountered a power line draping across the road. It was black and nearly invisible. I decided to stay and direct traffic around it because it was very dangerous to southbound cars - they wouldn't see it and if they hit it, it could come right through the windshield with catastrophic results. I directed traffic for about an hour and waited for the police - 4 calls to 911 and no police ever showed up.

Sabah finally called Khaled at home and asked him to bring me a warmer jacket, gloves, hat and flashlight. Khaled arrived just as the powerline came down. He heard the blast and saw it explode in his rear-view mirror. He was the last car that came though there. Five seconds later and he would have been a part of that - very scary.

Chuck, who lives in north Stamford is without power and was gracious enough to plug into a generator to download and share with me, these other photos, taken yesterday in Stamford.



Mastro, says the wind storm damage here isn’t the worst he’s seen, in his years working for Connecticut Power, but admitted it was among the most notable. Over the next days he says he and hundreds of other
utility workers brought in from around the state will remain in Fairfield County, spending their work all their waking hours repairing the damage from this weekend's storm.

Read the statement from Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell.