ORNGE chopper loses window in flight,
Incident especially worrisome because equipment had a modified design thought to have fixed the problem
OTTAWA— An ORNGE helicopter responding to pick up a patient in cottage country was forced to make a frosty emergency diversion after a cockpit window fell out midflight.
The incident happened Thursday afternoon as the Toronto-based AgustaWestland AW139 was en route to the Haliburton area.
While preparing for landing, the right side cockpit window popped out over a frozen lake, according to ORNGE spokesman James MacDonald.
The pilots aborted their landing and diverted to Muskoka airport, which was about 15 minutes away, where they made a safe arrival with no injuries to any of the four crew onboard.
The patient at the scene was transported to hospital in Huntsville by land.
ORNGE is now talking with AgustaWestland, manufacturer of the helicopter, to understand what went wrong, especially since the AW139 fleet has had problems with its cockpit windows, he said.
“As the safety of our crews and patients is our top priority, we take this matter seriously,” MacDonald told the Star.
He said AW139 operators around the world have reported a number of occurrences of the inflight loss of cockpit windows, dating back to 2008. “As a consequence, AgustaWestland established a program and made modifications to the specifications of the window assembly,” MacDonald said. However, this week’s incident is especially worrisome because the helicopter involved had a modified design that was meant to fix the problem. “As the ORNGE fleet is comprised of relatively recent deliveries of the AW139 aircraft, they were equipped with the modified window assembly,” MacDonald said. “We are currently in discussions with AgustaWestland to more fully understand the reason (Thursday’s) incident may have occurred and any follow-up action that may be required,” he said. It’s not the first time that ORNGE has suffered an incident like this. In 2012, an AW139 was over Toronto when a cabin door opened and a window blew out, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in a lakeshore park. One helicopter industry veteran called this latest incident “very serious” and said the outcome could have been much worse. For example, if the window had fallen out over a built-up area, someone could have seriously injured on the ground if they had been hit, he said. As well, as the window fell out, it could have been swept back into the tail rotor, causing it to fail, resulting in a potential catastrophic loss of control for the pilots, said the source, who spoke on background.
The cockpit door assembly — which includes the window — was replaced by a maintenance engineer and the aircraft was flown back to Toronto where it has been put back into service.
MacDonald said they have not recovered the missing window and don’t expect to.
The incident comes just over a week after another ORNGE helicopter was damaged during a landing in northern Ontario.
The Sikorsky S-76 was landing at a residence west of Thunder Bay when the rotor blades struck nearby trees. The pilots were able to safely land but the helicopter was stuck on the ground as ORNGE staff assessed the damage to the rotor blades.