Various television stations are reporting that a medical helicopter crashed outside of Brownsville, Tennessee. The NTSB has sent a team to the scene.
Apparently, the company operating the helicopter was Memphis Medical Center Air Ambulance Service, Inc., also known as Hospital Wing.
The helicopter was a Eurocopter Astar AS350B3 model.
Three crew members were killed in the crash. No patient was on the helicopter at the time.
There have been a significant number of emergency medical services helicopter crashes in the last few years, and improving the safety of these flights has been on the NTSB’s Most Wanted List of Safety Improvements since 2008. I wrote a blog post on this subject about one year ago, linking to a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal.