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Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

> I suspect people probably said the same thing the first time they saw a helicopter!

Odds are that they would have been right - early helicopters probably weren't safe enough to use as ambulances.

Well-run modern air ambulances are very safe edit: perhaps not, see replies (twin-engine helicopters with very experienced pilots) and can serve hundreds of patients per year, generally only serving very urgent cases of course. [0]

My question for the jet-pack folks is why not use a helicopter? Presumably the suit is a great deal cheaper, but are there any other advantages? Curiously the article doesn't mention helicopters at all, but in the video, they did their interview in front of one.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%27s_Air_Ambulance_Chari...

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A friend of mine has been an emergency doctor since 1990. A helicopter crashed with him on board once, killing the patient and causing him injuries that still can be seen after twenty years.

His comment: "We are ready to take risks. That is part of our work, just like cops' or soldiers'. Some missions are extra risky - industrial accidents or anything involved drugged or drunk people. We still take that risk."

IDK what the hazards of a first generation jetpack are, but odds are he would try it out eagerly.

Looks like you're right, nowhere near as safe as I'd imagined. [0][1]

I'm not sure if those figures are true globally or just for the US.

[0] https://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/helicopters/air-ambulance...

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123370317612745375

Probably just US, it would be hard to compile such data globally.

I dropped my friend a line and he answered back with a detailed description of his helo accident. It was one helluva freakish story.

They loaded an older lady in a hilly, wooded area not quite close to Ostrava (the largest city in the region, my birthplace). She had symptoms of a serious stroke, it was 1998, no one really expected her to live long, but not that short either.

A few minutes into the flight something (a nut?) exploded in the rotor and they went down like a stone. Very, very hard crash, still in a hilly, wooded area, but close to a big water reservoir, an artificial lake.

The lady died on impact. All other people on board survived with serious injuries, but they were saved by an unbelievable coincidence. A mine rescue team from Ostrava had a regular training on the lake and the helicopter crashed in their sight, less than a kilometer away. So they were there in like 3 minutes, dragged them to safety and put the burning wreck out.

If this was a movie, it would look totally unrealistic. But it happened.

Three months of rehabilitation and friend's lower back is still bad. He cannot stand completely upright, tilts slightly to a side.

So they instantly lost the main rotor? Same thing happens in mast bumping.

Here's the best explanation I know of: https://youtu.be/jDg1G2y8ZX4?t=293

(As far as I can tell no-one has made an animation of what happens.)

If they survived the crash, it probably was something necessitated an auto rotation, rather than the main rotor departing the helicopter. If that happened they would almost certainly be dead. If the nut on the top of the rotor mast detached - called the Jesus nut - they would also be dead. Mast bumping probably wasn't the cause either since that is a problem mostly constrained to a type of rotor system that wouldn't typically be used in an air ambulance setting. I'm not sure if I know of any helicopters with an underslung rotor system that are used by EMS operators.

> If they survived the crash, it probably was something necessitated an auto rotation, rather than the main rotor departing the helicopter

Good point, went down like a stone is unlikely to be true.

> a type of rotor system that wouldn't typically be used in an air ambulance setting

Sure, I didn't phrase my comment very well, hadn't meant to imply otherwise.

> ... why not use a helicopter?

Mentioned elsewhere in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24626472

The first really widespread use of early helicopters in any capacity was as air ambulances for the US military during the Korean War.

The risk profile is rather different in wartime. I presume those aircraft were a good deal less safe than modern ones, but I could be mistaken.

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