use2b:
I ride those "CH47's are damn sure old, over worked, and under maintained".
It was a MH-47E, not a CH-47. World of difference. Different aircraft, different crews, different maintenance. Not disputing the second part of your comment.
SNorman:
Our helicopters and airplanes have been crashing for years with predictable regularity. It is part of the normal background noise on page 42. You just never noticed till the media made it page 1.
We also don't normally get to fly the number of hours we have been lately. I am relatively certain that the Class A accidents per flight hour are constant.
Easiest way to stop all of this is to quit flying. Course, when you do start up again, rates will likely be higher, since you are out of practice.
odobo:
Same. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines dying every day. Airplanes crash every day. Just little notice till now.
MH-47E
F/A 18D
UH-1N
Crush Injury
AH-64A
5T. Cargo Truck
M113
CH-53E
KC-130
Small Arms Fire
Misdirected Aerial Ordnance
Maybe I'm missing something, but what is the common factor you see here? That humans were involved in all of the losses? Two month period of combat and high intensity operations, especially flight ops, several people killed. Is that a surprise?
No disrespect here, but we have a LOT of 18 year old kids and a mix of high tech and OLD equipment/weapons/ordnance designed to kill people, with combat operations. We get people killed doing this every day, and have been for years.