Carilion Clinic warned Tuesday against flying drones near medical helicopters, saying there have been two minor encounters so far this year.
Where medical helicopters land and take off, whether at hospitals or in the field, is no place for a drone, the Carilion personnel said.
Gathered at their Roanoke hangar, air ambulance pilots offered a public safety announcement: “When in doubt, land the drone.”
While admitting they don’t control the actions of drone operators, the Carilion medical helicopter team called on drone owners to voluntarily avoid medevac operations. There’s too much potential for conflict between the serious business of emergency medicine and hobbyists shooting video to put on the web or have as a keepsake, officials said.
When conventional aircraft share airspace, they stay in communication with each other and with people on the ground. The presence of a drone, whose operator isn’t linked into communications and may not be an aviator, raises the risk of a mishap or collision. “We don’t know what their intentions are and they don’t know what our intentions are,” said Susan Smith, who directs the air and specialty care divisions at Carilion patient transportation.
The bottom line: Medical chopper pilots, who cruise at 138 mph and pick up 1,500 patients yearly, have more than enough to think about without having to jockey around a drone.
Brian Wynne, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems in Arlington, said he appreciated Carilion for urging drone owners to put the safety and privacy of medical pilots and their patients first.
Carilion’s advisory “sounds exactly right,” Wynne said.
Wynne said the website http://knowbeforeyoufly.org offers comprehensive guidance for safe drone operation for recreational, government or business purposes.
The FAA directs operators of small recreational drones, which it calls model aircraft, to avoid manned aircraft, fly no higher than 400 feet and stay in control of their devices. But twice this year drones flew near medical operations involving Carilion aircraft, Smith said. Neither pilot needed to evade the drone and neither was delayed or reported a near miss, Smith said. But with drone popularity climbing, and prices falling, more people will fly drones in the future, creating more possible conflicts, she said.
Smith belongs to groups at the Association of Air Medical Services and the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Emergency Medical Services that will recommend means to curb the risks raised by drones. Under the latest thinking, an on-the-ground coordinator at each site who is assigned to assist with takeoff and landing scans the area for drones, notifies helicopter pilots of any drones present, identifies the drone’s owner if possible and asks him or her to land it, Smith said.
"When in doubt, land the drone,” Smith said.
In one of the two incidents, a drone hovered near a helicopter pickup of a patient at a Bluefield, West Virginia, hospital, Smith said.
In the other, pilot Tyson Le Roy landed his Life Guard helicopter near a Henry County traffic wreck, but the injured person was still being freed. A drone flew over the scene. Le Roy said that while the extraction continued, he wanted to reduce the weight of the aircraft before boarding the patient by taking a short flight to burn fuel. But he judged the drone was too close and stayed on the ground, missing the opportunity to shave a few minutes off the pickup.
Firefighters found the owner of the drone and the owner landed it, Le Roy said. It turned out that the person injured in the wreck didn’t need to go to the hospital. The lost time didn't matter, but under other circumstances could have.
“Ignorant and irresponsible use of these drones can create a hazardous situation for the patients that we serve in this business,” he said.
Source: http://www.roanoke.com
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