Guilty plea in Medford, Oregon, in 2008 fatal copter crash

An Oregon man has pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with the deadliest helicopter crash involving working firefighters in U.S. history.

Levi Phillips, 46, of Grants Pass faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in April. As part of a plea deal, he agreed to testify against another man, 42-year-old Steven Metheny of Central Point.  

Phillips was the director of maintenance for Carson Helicopters Inc., reporting directly to Metheny, a former vice president.

Prosecutors say that when the U.S. Forest Service solicited bids for helicopters to be used in firefighting operations, Metheny submitted proposals with altered performance charts and falsified weight and balance records. Then, after winning the $20 million contract, the incorrect information was given to pilots who had to calculate the maximum payload capacity during firefighting operations.

The Aug. 5, 2008, crash near Weaverville, Calif., killed the pilot, a Forest Service safety inspector and seven firefighters with Grayback Forestry of Merlin. The co-pilot and three firefighters were hurt. Witnesses said the helicopter took off more slowly than normal before clipping trees and then crashing into a hillside.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation showed the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter weighed more than 19,000 pounds when pilots tried to take off from a mountaintop clearing during the Iron 44 wildfire in Shasta-Trinity National Forest. If Forest Service guidelines had been followed, investigators said, the weight shouldn't have exceeded 15,840 pounds.

Phillips pleaded guilty Monday to a single charge of defrauding the Forest Service. Metheny remains charged with 22 counts of mail and wire fraud, making false statements to the Forest Service, endangering the safety of aircraft in flight, and theft from an interstate shipment.

A message left for Metheny's attorney, Steven L. Myers, wasn't immediately returned.

Relatives of the victims expressed relief to see someone accept responsibility.

Nina Charlson's 25-year old son, Scott Charlson, was one of the firefighters killed. Charlson said she is grateful that Phillips, who created the false charts, admitted his part in the scheme.

"Our one big hope is that this changes things," Charlson told the Mail Tribune  
(http://bit.ly/15pfTjT). m "We don't want history to repeat itself ... the mess that greed has caused."
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/

Source:  http://www.lasvegassun.com
 
NTSB Identification: LAX08PA259
14 CFR Public Use
Accident occurred Tuesday, August 05, 2008 in Weaverville, CA
Probable Cause Approval Date: 01/25/2011
Aircraft: SIKORSKY S-61N, registration: N612AZ
Injuries: 9 Fatal,4 Serious.

NTSB investigators traveled in support of this investigation and obtained data from various sources to prepare this public aircraft accident report.

The Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/A_Acc1.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-10-06.

On August 5, 2008, about 1941 Pacific daylight time, a Sikorsky S-61N helicopter, N612AZ, impacted trees and terrain during the initial climb after takeoff from Helispot 44 (H-44), located at an elevation of about 6,000 feet in mountainous terrain near Weaverville, California. The pilot-in-command, the safety crewmember, and seven firefighters were fatally injured; the copilot and three firefighters were seriously injured. Impact forces and a postcrash fire destroyed the helicopter, which was being operated by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) as a public flight to transport firefighters from H-44 to another helispot. The USFS had contracted with Carson Helicopters, Inc. (CHI) of Grants Pass, Oregon, for the services of the helicopter, which was registered to CHI and leased to Carson Helicopter Services, Inc. of Grants Pass. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident, and a company visual flight rules flight plan had been filed.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be:
The following actions by Carson Helicopters: 1) the intentional understatement of the helicopter's empty weight, 2) the alteration of the power available chart to exaggerate the helicopter's lift capability, and 3) the practice of using unapproved above-minimum specification torque in performance calculations that, collectively, resulted in the pilots relying on performance calculations that significantly overestimated the helicopter's load-carrying capacity and did not provide an adequate performance margin for a successful takeoff; and insufficient oversight by the U.S. Forest Service and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Contributing to the accident was the failure of the flight crewmembers to address the fact that the helicopter had approached its maximum performance capability on their two prior departures from the accident site because they were accustomed to operating at the limit of the helicopter’s performance.

Contributing to the fatalities were the immediate, intense fire that resulted from the spillage of fuel upon impact from the fuel tanks that were not crash resistant, the separation from the floor of the cabin seats that were not crash resistant, and the use of an inappropriate release mechanism on the cabin seat restraints.