Families get $30 million settlement 7 years after fatal Duke Life Flight crash

BY LEXI SOLOMON

Seven years after a Duke Life Flight helicopter crashed in eastern North Carolina, killing all four people on board, a lawsuit filed by two of the victims’ families has been settled for tens of millions of dollars.

Flight nurses Kristopher Harrison, 44, and Crystal Sollinger, 47; pilot Jeff Burke, 51; and patient Mary Bartlett, 70, died in the Sept. 8, 2017, accident, The News & Observer previously reported.

Harrison and Bartlett’s families sued Burke’s estate; Air Methods, the operator of the Life Flight program; Airbus Helicopters, which sold the helicopter; and Safran Helicopter Engines USA, which manufactured its engines, three months later, claiming their loved ones were wrongfully killed.

Their suits were dismissed Wednesday in exchange for a $30 million combined payment from Air Methods, Airbus and Safran, according to a news release from the plaintiffs’ attorneys. The three companies will pay a total of $21 million to Harrison’s family and $9 million to Bartlett’s family, the release said.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash and found Burke likely improperly shut off one of the helicopter’s two engines moments before the other engine seized up, The N&O reported. That engine’s failure was caused by an oil clogging problem that Airbus and Safran were aware of months before the crash after a similar incident in South Dakota, according to attorney Brittany Sanders Robb.

Robb was one of four lawyers representing the Harrison and Bartlett families. The Kansas City, Missouri-based aviation attorney represented Vanessa Bryant in the wrongful death suit tied to the deaths of her husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter Gianna in a helicopter crash.

What happened

Burke, Sollinger and Harrison had flown to Elizabeth City from the Duke Life Flight program’s base at Johnston County Regional Airport to pick up Bartlett, The N&O previously reported. Bartlett was to be transferred from Sentara Albemarle Medical Center to Duke for complications from surgeries for pancreatic cancer.

Bartlett’s husband of 47 years had asked to join her on the flight, but there wasn’t room, The N&O reported. He was supposed to meet her at the hospital.

It was shortly after 11 a.m. when the helicopter crashed in a ditch between two fields in Belvidere, roughly 12 miles from Elizabeth City. Everyone on board was killed in the fiery crash. A flight data recorder on-board had no usable information because its battery had apparently expired, the NTSB said.

Because of that, investigators were forced to infer what occurred from looking at the flight’s wreckage, including its engines and cockpit switches.

And what those engines showed — a problem known as “coking” — is what led to Wednesday’s settlement, according to Robb.

“It’s essentially when there’s a build-up of carbon-like deposits, I would describe it as, from the fuel or oil, and it then gets on those internal engine components,” she said. “It forms a residue that essentially obstructs the flow, and so the oil, the fuel, is no longer able to get to the engine and it ultimately leads to engine failure, which is what happened here.”

Airbus and Safran were aware of the issue because a similar, non-fatal crash in South Dakota had occurred just six months earlier, Robb said. A helicopter manufactured by Airbus’ German arm had to make an emergency landing Jan. 26, 2017, while trying to pick up a patient for an air ambulance operation, according to the NTSB report.

No one was injured in the incident, but examinations showed significant coking in both of the helicopter’s engines. The investigation led to new maintenance protocol created by Airbus and shared with Safran, according to Airbus’ report in the investigation.

But that maintenance protocol wasn’t followed by Air Methods, and neither manufacturer warned its clients of the issue, Robb said.

“Had they been doing proper maintenance procedures, and had they also had the warning from the manufacturers to be doing those proper maintenance procedures, [this] never would have happened,” she said. “So unfortunately, the signs of this happening are ones that maintenance personnel would see, and they clearly failed to do that here.”

Robb said she could not speak to Burke’s actions before the crash because her team focused on the coking problem.

Sollinger’s family was not a party in the suit.

Why did the families get different amounts?

Bartlett’s family received less than Harrison’s as a result of standard settlement procedures, Robb said.

“The numbers typically reflect the age, earning capacity and the age of the heirs [of victims],” she said.

Harrison left behind two minor daughters and “had many years of earning potential left,” whereas Bartlett was a retiree with three adult children, according to Robb.

Harrison graduated from N.C. State University in 1995 with a degree in zoology and met his future wife at Wake Tech’s nursing school, The N&O previously reported. The couple married in June 1999, according to The Goldsboro News-Argus.

Bartlett was a former nurse survived by her husband, two daughters, a son and six grandchildren, her obituary states.

Both families want the public to know the crash could have been prevented, Robb told The N&O.

“Their loved ones would still be here had these manufacturers and [this] operator done what they were supposed to do,” she said. “It is another reason why we refused to agree to a confidential settlement, because they want to be able to speak out about this and hopefully prevent it from happening in the future.”