Twenty-three years of accident-free medical rescues by UW Med Flight ended in tragedy Saturday, with the fatal nighttime crash of an American Eurocopter EC 135 helicopter on a wooded bluff five miles outside downtown La Crosse on a return trip to Madison after ferrying a patient to a La Crosse hospital.
The craft lost contact with the airport shortly after take-off at 10:48 p.m. Killed in the crash were Dr. Darren Bean, nurse Mark Coyne and pilot Steve Lipperer.
The cause of the accident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, but several studies have found circumstances of such a flight — at night and without a patient on board — are linked with high accident rates in what authorities have identified as an alarming increase in the number of emergency medical services aircraft crashes.