A federal report suggests that offering military pilots better access to flight simulators could help prevent crashes similar to the 2021 fatal military helicopter crash in Mendon.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, on Wednesday outlined several recommendations to improve military helicopter safety following the release of a report, completed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which reviewed nearly 300 Army and Air National Guard non-combat helicopter accidents that occurred between 2012 and 2021 to determine trends, existing safety processes and current deficiencies. Forty-five of those crashes were fatal, including the Mendon crash.
Three soldiers were killed in the 2021 military helicopter crash in Mendon caused by what New York Army National Guard officials described as human error. Killed were all three soldiers on board, chief warrant officers Steven Skoda and Daniel Prial, both of Rochester, and Christian Koch of Honeoye Falls.
Shortly after the Mendon crash, Schumer requested a federal probe into recent crashes of military helicopters.
Black hawk crash in Mendon
The New York Army National Guard UH-60 medical evacuation helicopter — also known as a Black Hawk — crashed in a nose-down position in a field near West Bloomfield Road during a routine training mission on Jan. 20, 2021. Col. Richard Goldenberg, public affairs officer for the New York National Guard, said in 2021 that the actions taken by the crew while rehearsing an emergency training maneuver, “put the aircraft in a position where it became unrecoverable.” It was, he said, an in-flight emergency related to the controls of the aircraft itself.
The helicopter was based at the Army Aviation Support Facility at the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport. This is where Skoda, Prial and Koch all worked full-time, conducting aircraft maintenance, training and flight operations.
As a result of the investigation, Goldenberg said, the U.S. Army modified its…
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