#45 Helicopter EMS "You are Not Hauling PATIENTS, You are Hauling CARGO"

Good morning. This beautiful sunrise. How many of those do you want to enjoy? How many of those you want to enjoy for you and your friends and your family? I shot a serious video last night when I got home after spending an evening with my family and talking about helicopter crashes and people losing their lives. I've been thinking as I'm drinking coffee about a catchy title for this video, a catchy thumbnail. I can't think of anything other than you and me, we can make a difference. I want to roll this video again after I got home last night. Just watch the video. I challenge you to spend the next nine minutes to watch this video to the end. And I challenge you to make a comment below. And I challenge you to like this video. And I challenge you, challenge you to talk about this, think about this. Just watch the video for me. Cool, glorious push play for me. You know, this is all in good fun. Coffee with Kenny is all in good fun. And hopefully this will be kind of cool. But I got something weighing heavy on my mind tonight. And it. And it has over the years, many times. And it's helicopter EMS accidents. And, you know, it really is a nationwide epidemic. It really is. Do a Google search if you don't believe me. And, you know, we did this FAA webinar a couple months ago and we had, you know, a pretty good turnout, but the video on YouTube just didn't really go anywhere. And, you know, a few likes and few comments, but it's like a video like that that we did. I brought in two experts, both of them over 30 years in the helicopter industry, EMS, specifically experts. So there wasn't just Kenny Keller whining and talking about it. I brought in two experts to talk about the things that happen, why helicopters crash, particularly ems, and the bad things that happen. So I'm gonna put that link by this video because I really would like it if some people would start liking and sharing and make some comments on it. It's. It's a tragedy, the things that go on and we hear these things happen and it's horrible. And I get emails, of course, always, anytime a helicopter goes down, I do get emails and texts and phone calls. People want to know, is it somebody I know? What do I think happened? And that's honest to God truth. And quite honestly, this one of the last ones, when somebody out of the blue, I mean, as soon as it happened, hey, Kenny, what do you think happened? And I always say the same thing. I go, you know, I don't know any of the details other than I know, an aircraft went down on, people's lives were lost. And it's horrible and, and it's sad, but I usually just say, well, most likely it's probably pilot flew into the crap. I mean, nine times out of 10 or seven times out of 10, it's pilots doing dumb stuff. There's a million reasons why pilots do dumb things. Pressures, whether it's from themselves or their company or they let the patient, you know, they let the emotional part get in it, you know, the company I worked for is no longer in existence. It was a great little company. I can say now what they told us because they're not even in existence. So I guess you really can't be too mad at this company. And they said, guys, you're hauling boxes of nails. You're not hauling patients, you are hauling boxes of nails, you're hauling cargo. For the medical crew, it's an emergency. For the nurse and the medic, they're doing their best to save somebody's life. As the helicopter pilot, you cannot operate that way. You cannot fly like it's a medical emergency. You must walk to the aircraft. And with my police and fire background and even towing servants where they would call us in the towing service and even though we didn't legally couldn't run signal 10, they would ask us, can you hurry, we need you to use the wrecker for extrication. So I had a lifetime of that background going into helicopter ems and the first job that I went to, and this gentleman that was the first person to train me is in our video tipping the scale on the fatal helicopter accidents. And he taught me, he goes, I know you come from a law enforcement background. He goes, and fire department, he goes, we don't run to the helicopter, we walk to the helicopter. You walk around the helicopter, you pre flight, you get in, you strap in and you go through your checklist. And I thought that was strange at first. You know, coming from an emergency services background. I was surprised in the beginning, but I'm not surprised after doing it. That's the way it has to be. A pilot has to be able to do his job without being pressured, without being pressured by the company he works for, without being pressured by the medical crew, without being pressured by the emergency personnel at the scene. People call and oh, we got to get you here, we got to get you here. A pilot has so many things weighing on his mind. When he makes these decisions about going to fly, he sometimes maybe he may not make the right decision. And it he can be trying to think clearly but there's so many outside forces that act on a pilot and you know, and they tell you, oh, and by the way, when you go through the initial training, it's usually like a week, 10 days or two weeks of training. When you first start in helicopter EMS, what they told us, they go, oh, by the way, your pilot in command, you're responsible for every one, everything. No, you're not a nurse. No, you're not a medic. You're still. You're still in charge. You're still responsible for that medical crew. You're responsible for anybody that approaches the aircraft when you're at the scene. Anything goes wrong during that flight, you are responsible. So you know what? I don't know what the answer is. Pilots making bad decisions. This isn't the fun cup what I was hoping for, but, you know, I guess I can use it for this moment in time because I'm not supervised right now. I like this. In my defense, I was left unsupervised. I don't work for anybody else. I work for me. Aircraft insured by me. I make the decisions. Whether I go fly or not. I don't. Luckily, I don't have that pressure anymore. Pilots put themselves in bad positions sometimes. They can have the best intentions trying to do the right thing, but they can be swayed by outside sources. And until we take away that. Until we take away that outside pressure, I don't. I don't know how it's gonna get any better. There are things I know that they're. They're trying to put into place, and they're trying to make it safer. But if you don't believe me, it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. Look it up on Google because you'll find out it is. It's just a horrible. And it's a dilemma. It's an epidemic. And here's the one big thing that I found really disheartening was in the rules and regulations for the first CMS company I went to work for in the States. In their own policy, the hospital policy, if the patient doesn't fit the criteria, then you don't fly them. You refuse to flight. So as I got into this business, I kept hearing, well, we shouldn't have flown this guy. Well, he didn't need flown. This was a. This is a mountain milk run. And I, at a certain point, I asked the medical crew because I didn't know any better, and I'm like, hey, your hospital procedure says if they don't fit a certain criteria, you can't fly them, right? And like. Yeah, that's right. I go. And I Quite often, quite often, from I hear what you say over the intercom, that's a milk run that this person doesn't need flown. And they'd go, yeah. I'm like, so you're telling me, yeah. Why. Why are we flying them? And they go, oh, it's bad business to tell a hospital. No, that's what they said. It was bad business because if we turn down that hospital flight, they'll just call somebody else and we lose that flight. So even if the patient doesn't meet the criteria, we're still going to fly them, you know. And I walked away from that going, wow. So there you go. You know something nobody knows I've never talked about Ida. That's me from aopa. An editor reached out, want me to co author a book on what I seen and the things I observed in ems. And I haven't done it, you know, because everybody says, oh, God, don't ruin your career. Because you talk out against EMS and it's gonna be bad and you're gonna be shunned from the industry, you know, so I've never done it, but there's a lot of really good things that go on and there's a lot of great people out there. I did it for five years. It was a great experience. I loved it. And they do save lives. And there's so many good things behind it. And it's. And it is great in its form when used properly. But the flip side of that is the amount of people that die in the crashes. And it's. When you're flying over people's homes for that one person, you're risking the medical crew with you, you're risking the patient and everybody's homes and businesses you're flying over to get from point A to point B. If you make a bad decision. Love for. I'd love to hear some actual feedback on that. And I'm going to put the link nearby for that. That video we did on the tipping the scales, you know, the. On the back, in survivability favor. I can't remember what we titled it, but it was a. Basically, I run into EMS helicopter experts that put their time and effort and we put our time and effort to create this and we'd love to get some people watching it and, and get the conversations going because somebody needs to stir up the industry. I, you know, I got a big mouth and I'll do what I can, but don't know that. That's enough. So tomorrow, I don't know if I'll use this cup because I got a whole bunch of cups. Coffee with Kenny. There'll be another. Another something tomorrow. Coffeewithkenny. Com. Hope you join us there. See you in the next.