Catalina Island crash shows REACH Air Medical Services is failing
By Daniel Okafor · Reporting from New York ·
A helicopter crash off Catalina Island left two dead and one missing, showing that REACH Air Medical Services must be grounded after repeated failures.
REACH Air Medical Services is failing the people it must save. A medevac helicopter crashed into the ocean near Avalon on Wednesday night, leaving two people dead and two injured. One person remains missing.
The water at Avalon
The helicopter was bound for the mainland, but it crashed shortly after takeoff, according to Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn. The aircraft sank into 240 feet of water, and the Los Angeles County Fire Department received a report of three people in the ocean around 7:53 p.m., ABC7 Los Angeles said.
The Guardian said that Catalina Island sits off the mainland. County firefighters and lifeguards responded. The US Coast Guard assisted in the rescue, and medics wheeled at least one victim off a helicopter at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
The Coast Guard said five people went into the water. The Los Angeles County Fire Department said that two people died and others went to hospitals or remained missing. Rescuers searched through the night.
A spokesperson for REACH Air Medical Services said the company is gathering information and coordinating with authorities. Their immediate concern is the well-being of those involved.
Why does the pattern matter?
This disaster shares the mechanism of the REACH Air Medical Services crash, where a medical transport operator experiences repeated crashes within a short timeframe. In that crash, an Air India flight crashed shortly after takeoff into student hostels. The accident killed people on the ground, and only one passenger survived.
A REACH helicopter crashed onto the eastbound lanes of U.S. Route 50 after departing the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. The crash critically injured the pilot, nurse, and paramedic, and the flight nurse later died at a hospital.
Free Malaysia Today said that the Catalina crash also happened shortly after takeoff. This repeated failure suggests a flaw when flights begin, pointing to a problem with pre-flight checks or how pilots orient themselves. Losing multiple aircraft within a year is a failure.
Federal contracts carry a cost
REACH Air Medical Services holds federal contracts with the Department of Defense that total over $15 million. The company also holds smaller purchase orders from the Department of Justice. Some of these range from $91,000 to $166,000.
Some may argue these crashes are isolated events. They might say a single pilot error or a sudden weather shift caused the plunge at Avalon. They would argue that the Sacramento crash involved a different environment with different variables.
But the long record of aviation safety shows that repeated accidents within a year signal that the system has collapsed entirely. For this to be an isolated event, the Sacramento crash and the Catalina crash would have to share no common link in maintenance, safety culture, or training. The facts do not support that.
Catalina Island relies on these aerial links for emergency care. When a medevac helicopter fails, the water cuts the island off from the mainland. The risk is not just to the crew, but to the patients who have no other way to reach a trauma center.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, but the pattern is already clear because a medical operator with two fatal crashes in one year is a liability. Federal regulators must ground the REACH Air Medical Services fleet for a safety audit. The government should not pay $15 million to a company that cannot guarantee a safe takeoff.