0O6A1327_01

The speaker describes the preparations they go through before each flight to ensure safety. They start with a reflex test on their phone to ensure they are well-rested. They then check the helicopter for any issues and review the weather conditions. They also gather everyone and brief them on the day's plans. Safety is prioritized over speed, as rushing can lead to mistakes. Lack of sleep and getting calls at odd hours can be challenging, but they manage by getting rest beforehand and taking safety naps if needed. They also have reflex tests after night calls to ensure they are still in good shape. The speaker shares that sometimes there are problems with the aircraft, and they have procedures to handle them. Unforeseen weather can be a major issue, and crew decision-making is crucial in such situations. Emergency landings are possible, but the options depend on whether it's a single or dual-engine helicopter. What do I do with my hands? You can just put them on your lap. You can like do while you're talking. Do whatever you want. I don't know what to do with my hands right now. Okay. First question. Your name and what you do and like who you work for. You want me to say PHI or Medical City? PHI. PHI, okay. I mean I'll say whatever you want me to. Just say you work for Medical City. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. You can say you work for PHI. PHI. Who flies for Medical City. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You ready? Yeah. Can you see the like audio levels on your computer? Yeah. Is it like picking that up? Do you know? It should. It's just picking up for you right now. Okay. We're good. Okay, cool. You ready? My name is Mitch McLenar and I'm an EMS pilot. I work for PHI who flies for Medical City. Can you describe your typical preparations you go through before each flight to ensure safety for everyone? All right. Yeah, it's kind of a process. Once you get it down, it starts to speed up. The first thing we do when we get to work is we show up and we do a little reflex test on our phone actually, and we have to pass that test, which is essentially just a box that turns a color, and you click it as soon as you see the color to be sure that you're responding appropriately, well rested, and just ready to, you know, do what the job requires. So we'll do that first and foremost before we start any of the other harder duties. We'll come out. We'll sign into the computer, start our day because we are limited to the amount of hours we can work. So that kind of goes into having proper rest and stuff. They don't want us working too long. So we'll log into the computer to start our day, and then we'll come out to the helicopter and do a preflight. Then we'll just go around opening all the cowls, looking at everything, being sure it's got proper oil levels, you know, there's no loose rags or anything if the mechanics were out here working on it, just being sure it's an airworthy aircraft. Then we'll go back inside, check the weather to know what we're dealing with today. You don't want to fly through, you know, thunderstorms or tornadoes or anything too crazy. But if there's any rain or low clouds, we just want to be prepared for that. So, yeah, we'll check the weather, and then we'll gather everybody up and brief the day, you know, what to expect, whether we're going to be flying in the clouds or if there's any limitations on the aircraft today, how much oxygen we got on board, that kind of stuff. So we're all on the same page before any calls come through. So we're already working as a team. And, yeah, and then just kind of watching each other. You know, as the calls come in, you know, back to back to back, people get tired, and you're just looking at each other, being sure everybody's still fit for duty. And if anybody on the aircraft feels unsafe at all or even before we take off, you can say, hey, I'm not comfortable with this, and no questions asked, we're not taking the call. It's, you know, safety first. But, yeah, that's kind of what we do to prepare for our day. How do you balance safety with speed? I mean, I know you have to get a patient as fast as you can while still making sure that everyone is. Yeah. So, yeah, balancing safety versus speed. We are an emergency medical service, so there is kind of that sense of urgency without rushing. And this is something that kind of comes just with time. You know, the more you do something, the more quickly you can do it safely. So when you first start out, things are going to take longer because we don't want to rush and make a mistake because it can cost us a lot in this field of work. So, yes, we do want to get to the patient as fast as we can, but at the end of the day, we want to be sure everybody goes home. So it's kind of the balance of looking at it kind of like it's not my emergency. It's the patient's emergency. I shouldn't compromise what we're doing or skip any steps to get there 30 seconds faster. Because in the grand scheme of things, we're already saving a lot of time flying out to East Texas versus driving. So if you kind of keep that in mind, it helps keep it in perspective of take your time, do your walk around of the aircraft. You know, 30 seconds isn't going to make or break the deal. So that's kind of how we do it. One of the major questions I have and was wondering is how does the lack of sleep and just, like, getting a call at, like, 3 a.m., how does that affect what you do to, like, make sure you don't fall asleep here? Right. Yeah, calls in the middle of the night, they can be tricky. Everybody deals with the night differently. Like, some people are night owls, some people are morning people. That's just the way it is. But you try to, when you're on the night shift, come in to work rested, even if that means sleeping during the day while you're at home a little bit. Some people will sleep all day. Some people kind of break up their sleep schedule into segments. And if you need to take a safety nap at work, you can. But you don't want to count on that because sometimes we run from the second we walk in the door, you know, 14 hours later we're getting home. So you don't want to count on getting sleep at work. But that is kind of one of the perks of, you know, having a bed here at the hangar is if you are feeling a little sleepy, you can get ahead of it and try and snooze for 30 minutes or an hour to stay sharp and ready. And that reflex test I was talking about, after every night call, we have to do one to be sure we're still in good shape. And if we can't pass it, then we're done for the night. We have to take a set amount of rest and kind of take steps from there. Personally, I kind of break my sleep up a little bit so I get some sleep during the day. I don't crash out for 12 hours at home. But I'll get some sleep and then come in. And just depending on how the calls go, maybe I'll get a little rest. And how busy I am that night will determine how much sleep I need in the following day. So just kind of managing your time and your sleep. Do you have any, like, stories about, like, any time that there's been, like, a problem with the safety or, like, the aircraft itself where you had to, like, double check or double anything? Yeah, that does happen. It is a machine just like your car. It can break down. You hope it doesn't happen during flight. Or if it is, you hope it's something not important. But stuff does happen. And we are trained to, you know, react accordingly, whether it's immediately or pull out the checklist and kind of troubleshoot the problems because there's a million different things that can go wrong. There are some we have memorized to react right away. Others we have a little time. It's not as serious. We can pull out our cheat sheet and be sure we're, you know, figuring out what the problem is, how serious it is, do we need to land now, do we need to land at the next airport, or can we come back home and have maintenance take a look at it. But, yeah, there's some stories out there. In the EMS world, I would say most of them or a lot of them turn out to be weather-based. So we're looking at the weather when we come in for work, but you know meteorologists here in Texas, it's 50-50, right? Flip a coin. So we're looking at the same thing they're looking at and trying to guess what the night's going to hold. And if you're not prepared for, you know, freezing rain or fog that pops up unexpectedly or, you know, clouds just appear out of nowhere, it can get into kind of a dangerous situation. And that's where not so much the aircraft is having a problem or broken, but crew decision-making kind of becomes the ultimate pillar of safety. You know, hey, should we continue or do we need to turn around or divert now? And that's something that can be kind of decided as a crew, and acting quickly and decisively will help keep you out of trouble. I'm sure every EMS pilot out there has been flying along, and all of a sudden there's some unforecast freezing rain or clouds pop up, and rather than push it to make it to the patient, you know, to try and be the hero and all that stuff, it's, hey, this isn't going the way we thought it was going to. Let's turn around. We'll roll the trucks, and we'll take it from there. But, yeah, encountering unforecasted weather or weather just doing something you were not ready for is probably what most of the stories are. And then there can be, like, chip lights that happen in the engine or the transmission just as you're going, and it picks up a little shaving of metal. In your car, you know, not really a big deal. Just pull over to the side of the road once your engine blows. But in the helicopter, a lot more serious. That's how we're staying up in the air. So we get this thing that's telling us, hey, you're picking up metal, and we don't know how much metal. Is it a lot? Is it just a little sliver? What? Something's coming apart. So that's where kind of looking at the terrain around you and knowing the history of the aircraft come into effect and, you know, how quickly do we need to land this bird. In the field right there or out in the airport that's two miles away, that's probably better because it'll take us just as long to get down from the altitude we're at. It's just a prepared runway of the airport versus in some trees in a random farmer's field that could have wires strung about. So, yeah, I could go on and on with different stories and stuff, even outside the EMS world. But if you want more, we could come back to those. And really just one more question. Tell me about, like, the emergency landing. How does that work? Can you land anywhere as fast as you can? Do you have to navigate? Where are the closest? Yeah, so emergency landings, there's two kind of different mindsets you have to have, whether you're in a single-engine helicopter or a dual-engine helicopter. This one's a dual-engine helicopter, so one engine failure, yeah, it's kind of a deal, not nearly as big of a deal if it's your only engine keeping you in the air, like in a single-engine helicopter. So with our helicopter here, two engines, if we lose one, it gives us some time to kind of troubleshoot, and it turns a land immediately into a land as soon as possible or practical, you know, whatever makes sense at the time. In this one, we lose an engine. Yes, it is an emergency landing. We will probably have the power to come down a hover. If not a hover, then a slow kind of taxi that we can land onto a hard runway or a prepared surface to give us a safe landing, so not as time-sensitive in the twin engines. But you still have to plan, you know, where's a good place to do it? Do I have gas to get there? What are the conditions? All that kind of coming into play, and you're just processing it all and making the best decision. In the single-engine helicopters, your decision's already made. You lower a control, and you start your landing process right away, and you're looking for either the best field, parking lot, runway, ideally a hard surface, and something that's got some space because you might not be able to bring it to a complete stop. You may need to kind of run on the ground a little bit. And, yeah, we are trained in all those maneuvers, and you just kind of have to take what's in front of you and assess it. In the single engines and even in the multi-engines, as we're flying along, it's ingrained in me now. I see an open field. All right, that's a pretty good area. I'll keep that one in mind until I find the next best one. And you kind of just hopscotch around until, you know, you get to where you're going. So, yeah, it's kind of... Nice. Yeah, I heard it like it was like a shudder. Yeah. It almost sounded like it was taking a picture. You're good. You can get up now. You're done with me? I'm done with you. I'm surprised she didn't tell the story of Mark getting stuck in this fog the other day. Oh, yeah. It was the perfect example of, whoops, thought we'd have time. Oh, yeah, we're good. It just...the screen shuts off to save... Oh, it recorded it, though? Yeah, it caught on. Okay, okay. I didn't know it did that. It scared me. Yeah, like, uh-oh, is it on picture mode? You're going to be distilled with me talking? That's right. It was just taking rapid-fire pictures of you. That was good. Did you get everything you needed? Yeah, I'm doing that other guy, too, so... Hopefully he'll be better, right? He's military, right? Is he current military, like he's still... He's ex-military. Okay. I don't think Brian doesn't have any military, does he? No. Just Rich is the only military person we have, right? Yeah, I don't think Brian was. He's an oil and gas. Brian was, at least, if he came up civilian flying. If he was in the military, I wasn't. You can get in the front and he can flip all the buttons for you. All right. Okay. He just checked most of us already. Engine failures, weird vibrations. You did that to me. You did that to me.