What: Helicopter afloat in Gulf of Mexico
Where: Terrebonne Parish
When: September 1, 2010, 8:40 a.m.
Who: Reid Aldrich of Nampa, Ind., David Portlock of Lafayette, Brian Meadows of Carencro, and John Howell of Cape Coral, Fla.
Why: Helicopter over the Gulf of Mexico made an emergency landing IN the Gulf, staying afloat with flotation devices until rescued by two Coast Guard Dolphin helicopters. Good Samaritan fishing vessel, Nhu-Uyen and motor vessel CAPT. Joel assisted in the rescue. The injured were taken to Terrebonne General Medical Center. There were no fatalities.
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Life Jacket with AirPocket Can Save Lives
The Lifejacket Airpocket Plus (LAP) combined lifejacket and hybrid rebreather is a lifesaver. Imagine a life jacket that lets you breathe air. Genius, right? I’ve seen too many helicopter crashes to and from oil rigs. Some of those fatalities should be preventable. This hybrid life jacket would really come in handy to have on a Super Puma helicopter plunging into the North Sea, or the Gulf of Mexico. I hope I’m never in that situation, but if I am, you can bet I’ll be wearing one, and I’ll have read the directions.A couple of lives may not have been saved with it simply because of directions.
A rebreather is an apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of exhaled breath to permit the recycling of available oxygen. The hybrid unit is a little something extra.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) believes the instructions on how to use this device need to include the information that the rebreather has an air supply; so if someone is in the middle of drowning, they don’t have to be going down with a last breath of air. The rebreather already has some. It’s not like a scuba diving tank with loads of air, but hey, it’s a way to breathe if you’re submerged in a helicopter and don’t have gills. What if all you need is just enough air to keep you alive to get the seatbelt off, or to swim out of an opening? That’s some precious air, all right.
So kudos to the revised pre-flight briefing material. Even if it is a knee-jerk reaction after another tragic helicopter crash, good idea AAIB.
- Aérospatiale | Crash | Fuerza Aérea Mexicana | Mexico | unresolved | Video | weather
José Francisco Blake Mora Dead in Chopper Crash
What: Fuerza Aerea Mexicana Aérospatiale AS 332L Super Puma
Where: Temamatla , Edo de Mexico
When: Nov 11, 2011, around noon
Who: 9 aboard, 9 fatalities
Why: A Mexican government helicopter en route from Mexico City to Cuernavaca carrying 9 passengers crashed, killing everyone aboard.Those aboard included José Francisco Blake Mora, Secretary of the Interior, Felipe Zamora Castro, Legal Affairs and Secretary of the Interior Ministry DH, Jose Alfredo Garcia Medina, director of social communication Interior Ministry, Diana Miriam Hayton Sanchez, technical secretary of the office, and Major Rene de Leon, Lt. Col. Philip Bacio Cortes, Jorge Luis Juarez Gomez, Ramon Escobar Segundo and Pedro Teninete Becerra.
The chopper was en route to a prosecutors meeting. It went down in heavy cloud cover, so weather is considered to be a factor. Mexico’s No. 2 official, Francisco Blake Mora, who embodied Mexican government’s get-tough attitude, is one of the victims of the crash. Mora been a key figure in Mexico’s battle with drug cartels and he oversaw disaster response, like the pipeline explosion in San Martin Texmelucan in 2010. He is the 2nd interior secretary in this administration to die in an air accident.