Paramedics, Patient Had Taken Ground Transport After Trouble Found

One person is dead after a medical helicopter went down in rural Mississippi late Wednesday night, after the pilot and crew apparently noticed problems with the aircraft.

Published reports say the aircraft, an A-Star 350D (incident aircraft shown below, right) leased from Rocky Mountain Helicopters (RMH) in Provo, UT, had been dispatched from the North Mississippi Medical Center to a one-car accident in Tippah County at approximately 2022 local time Wednesday night.

Hospital President and CEO John Heer said, once on the scene, the crew spotted a problem of an unspecified nature in the "chin bubble" of the aircraft. While that was not a structural or mechanical issue, Heer said the pilot called in a mechanic while the patient and the crew's two paramedics went to the hospital by ambulance.

After the mechanic arrived and worked on the aircraft, Heer said the A-Star lifted off from the scene of the car accident at 2303 and was lost en route back to the hospital.

The pilot's body was recovered by search teams on Thursday morning.

It was, said Heer, the first time in 7,000 flight hours racked up over a period of 18 years that the NMMC helicopter had been involved in an accident.

FMI: www.nmhs.net/aeromedical