(OTTAWA) The families of six members of the Canadian Armed Forces who were killed in the crash of a Cyclone helicopter in April 2020 are suing the manufacturer.
The lawsuit was filed July 10 in U.S. Federal Court in Pennsylvania, where Sikorsky CH-148 helicopters are built and tested.
Lawyers representing the families say a design flaw caused the electronic flight control system to take over the helicopter, plunging it into the Ionian Sea off the Greek coast, nose first.
The tragedy claimed the lives of Master Corporal Matthew Cousins, Sub-Lieutenants Abbigail Cowbrough and Matthew Pyke, and Captains Kevin Hagen, Brenden MacDonald and Maxime Miron-Morin.
According to the lawsuit, the six people on board knew they were going to die in the moments before the crash and experienced “unimaginable terror and fright”.
“Reflecting the company’s indifference to safety over profit, Sikorsky’s defendants, faced with missed deadlines and financial penalties, took shortcuts to expedite the CH-148’s entry into service,” the motion reads.
A system never certified
The document states that an electronic flight control system had never been used in any military helicopter in the world when the Department of National Defense requested proposals for a new fleet in the 1990s. However, Sikorsky offered it as a feature to recoup some of the development costs for a different civilian model.
The US agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, however, never certified the control system for the other helicopter model, according to the suit. “Because Sikorsky could not find a single buyer […], the system was never put into production. »
Also according to the lawsuit, the company analyzed flight data from the crash and found that the system took control of the helicopter when the pilots performed “significant pedal and cyclic inputs” in autopilot mode, as it did on April 29, 2020.
Cyclone pilots were performing a low-altitude maneuver similar to a “return to target” maneuver commonly used in rescue or combat operations.
The motion states that the pilots believed they could override the autopilot without disconnecting it.
A phenomenon “unknown” to many
A flight safety investigation report by the Airworthiness Investigation Authority for the Armed Forces called the software problem a “command model attitude bias phenomenon, which “develops in a very specific and narrow set of circumstances.”
The Royal Canadian Air Force’s Director of Flight Safety at the time, Brigadier General John Alexander, was quoted as saying the phenomenon “was unknown to the manufacturer, airworthiness authorities and crews” prior to the accident.
“Prior to the crash, neither the Royal Canadian Air Force nor the pilots of the helicopter involved were made aware of this potentially fatal Sikorsky design flaw,” attorney Stephen Raynes said in a statement.
“Sikorsky has still not fixed the computer software problem that led to the crash. »
The lawsuit says the company violated industry standards and practices in a number of ways, including failing to create an alert system for such an event and failing to design the flight director to automatically disengage if pilots go beyond what the company tested.
The document says that under Canadian and U.S. law, the Department of National Defence, the Armed Forces and the Royal Air Force cannot be named as defendants in a case seeking damages for injuries sustained in the line of duty.
None of the allegations have been tested by the courts.
The Department of National Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
A spokesman for Sikorsky, which is owned by Lockheed Martin, declined to comment on Wednesday. The company has yet to file a response in court.
Me Raynes previously represented plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Sikorsky related to a fatal accident in March 2009 off the coast of Newfoundland.
This tragedy — which involved the S-92, a precursor to the CH-148 model — claimed the lives of 15 of the 16 workers who traveled to an oil rig.
The agreements reached in this case are confidential, but the website of Me Raynes says the amounts ensure plaintiffs’ financial security and “honor those they’ve lost.”