Ever since the fatal crash of a CHC Scotia-operated Super Puma helicopter off the coast of Shetland in August 2013, there have been calls for tighter safety oversight of rotorcraft firms plying their trade on the UK’s side of the North Sea.
The aftermath of the Sumburgh crash, in which four people died when the Airbus Helicopters AS332 overturned following impact with the sea, has seen the sector subject to a series of sweeping inquiries and consequently a flurry of activity as it tries to cope with a swathe of new regulation and recommendations.
The first inquiry report, and by far the most regulation-heavy, was published by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in February, but on top of this were additional parallel reviews by the helicopter operators themselves, the oil and gas industry, and the UK House of Commons Transport Committee. The latter has, in turn, called for an “independent public inquiry” on the grounds that the CAA is too close to the problem.
The CAA review – or CAP1145 to use the reference number that has become shorthand for its official name – contained an unusually large 32 actions and 29 recommendations, most of which are ambitious and long-term. But it seems a number of the accident survivability objectives will be achieved in timescales that, at the time, would have looked impossible.
Perhaps the most remarkable consequential advance is the speed of putting into service an improved breathing device to reduce the drowning risk for crew and passengers in helicopters that ditch in – or crash into – the sea and are roll inverted. Not only has an emergency breathing system (EBS) been developed and approved, but the necessary training for all the people who need it has been completed.
To put this in context, the CAA had offered a temporary alternative to providing an improved EBS: ensuring all passengers were seated next to an exit, effectively banning the use of seats in the middle of the cabin and significantly cutting overall capacity. Since June, any operator not ready with the total EBS equipment/training package has had to do this, and from January 2015, EBS will be compulsory regardless of cabin configuration.
(Actually there was another alternative – the installation of additional fuselage-mounted floatation devices to prevent roll-overs, although operators were quick to question the inclusion of something that appeared to be years away from development, let alone certification.)
Two other CAP1145 recommendations already in force are the requirement that helicopters dispatched for overwater flights must have their floatation devices armed, and dispatch is forbidden if the sea state is worse than 6 (waves maximum 6m), and the sea state at the destination platform or ship is less than the type’s approved ditching certification standard.
Critics of the CAA review concede that it is strong on survivability and weak on accident prevention strategy. Speaking at the Norwegian operators’ Flyoperativt Forum in Oslo in April, deputy manager flight operations for CHC Helikopter Service – sister company of CHC Scotia – Sigmund Lockert, maintained that the study concentrates on survivability at the expense of accident prevention and safety culture improvement. Countering Lockert’s suggestion that the CAA is not concentrating sufficiently on accident prevention, other CAA recommendations for the longer term include a review of the effectiveness of pilot instrument flying training, and a programme to improve helidecks, their lighting, and guidance for approach and landing.
The CAA says it wants to “promote and support the implementation of the results of the research on helideck lighting, operations to moving helidecks, differential GPS guided offshore approaches and helicopter terrain awareness warning systems.” The agency says it will “seek to ensure funding for the research” to achieve these objectives.
Meanwhile, UK lawmakers have had their say, too. The UK House of Commons Transport Committee – by necessity a much more political beast – has called for an independent public inquiry on the grounds that the CAA “did not consider the evidence that commercial pressure impacts on helicopter safety”. It added that the “role and effectiveness” of the CAA itself also needs to be independently reviewed.
The committee report, issued in July, does not, however, call into question the CAA’s technical expertise nor the Air Accidents Investigation Branch’s conclusions in recent crash investigations, and it has welcomed CAP1145. However, the committee says there are still areas that neither agency has addressed.
The committee says its own study is a reaction to the accident rate of UK-based North Sea helicopter operators. This, it says, has resulted in real nervousness and stress among the oil rig workforce about the safety of the industry as a whole and of the Airbus Helicopters Super Puma fleet in particular, given that variants of the type have been involved in most of the recent major incidents. Their concern, said the committee, had not been adequately addressed. It says: “We were disheartened to learn of instances that reflect a ‘macho bullying culture’,” in which worried workers were told that if they disliked the risk, they should leave the industry. The committee adds: “We were extremely concerned to hear about how crash survivors wearing safety equipment struggled to evacuate through egress windows after helicopters capsized in the sea. The CAA must set out how it will address that key issue as a matter of urgency.”
A major concern, says the report, is the lack of standardisation in operating procedures. This, it says, is driven by differing customer requirements which the operators strive to meet, but which forces individual crews to operate procedures that vary client by client. The committee notes that there is much greater operational standardisation in the statistically safer Norwegian sector. The report calls on the CAA to use its chairmanship of the newly formed Offshore Helicopter Safety Action Group to lead the standardisation of customer requirements for helicopter operators.
“This is an opportunity for the CAA to demonstrate its ability and willingness to stand up and lead industry in reducing risk during helicopter operations.”
Although the committee says there is insufficient evidence to dismiss out of hand the CAA’s claims that there is no “significant” difference in the safety statistics or operating practices in the UK and Norwegian sectors, the report notes a “worrying” divergence in reporting culture, and gives the CAA 12 months to work with its Norwegian counterpart to explain this.
Mandatory occurrence reporting has been a part of the British system for many years, and was introduced by the Norwegians relatively recently, but from that standing start, its operators have apparently set up a more participative system in this sector.
The committee also used the fact that a standard pre-flight briefing for passengers on the use of the now-replaced passenger EBS was ineffective because it had been allowed to go out of date, as evidence of complacency among operators and the CAA. It says it is “deeply disturbing” that it took the deaths of four people in the Sumburgh accident to reveal the discrepancy.
The committee makes it clear that it believes the CAA and AAIB do not consult accident survivors and system users to the extent they should, particularly with regard to keeping them informed on the progress of investigations.
“More widely, the oil and gas industry must examine the experiences of crash survivors. In particular, more must be done to address the financial and psychological anxiety of survivors who cannot [face the journey to] work [after the accident],” it says.
Where the committee, the CAA and the AAIB all agree, however, is that there is no reason to conclude that Super Puma helicopters pose more of a safety risk than their competitors, despite the fact that all five UK accidents since 2009 have involved variants of that marque. The committee in particular notes that Super Pumas – EC225s and AS332s – make up some 60% of the offshore helicopter fleet, increasing the likelihood of one being involved in an accident.
The report, however, records a lack of confidence in the European Aviation Safety Agency, citing “regulatory inertia”. It calls on the CAA to take leadership, and for the UK government to give it that power in the event of EASA’s failure to act.
The Department for Transport says it will respond formally to the committee in due course. "It is vital that offshore workers are able to operate in a safe environment. We are working closely with the CAA, as the independent regulator, on this critical issue,” it says.
The third strand of safety reviews, however, is being driven by the operators themselves. Created in September 2013, the Joint Operators Review (JOR) comprises Avincis – parent of Bond Offshore Helicopters and Norway's NHS – Canada’s CHC Helicopter and Bristow Group. It is designed to ensure that there is better sharing of operational data and safety practice.
It is indeed complex. The operators all have internal safety reporting and management systems, but making them digitally compatible will take considerable resources. The flight data monitoring programmes (FDM) are a case in point. The JOR says the group enables operators to share their data and how they use it to "achieve safety improvements".
It says: "As we learn from each other, we will ever-more effectively use this data to deliver safer operations in the UK and around the world.” The JOR group says it is making progress toward all operators using a standard safety information exchange, based on one already in use internally by some of its members. This will be used to share details of occurrences, technical failures, and other incidents at an industry level.
Data from other operational safety quality assurance programmes, like line orientated safety audits (LOSA), is another way of “identifying new approaches that can further raise safety performance”, says the JOR. LOSA is a long-established system at airlines but a relatively recent arrival in rotary-wing operations.
The JOR says it has linked up with a US-based helicopter emergency medical services operator to understand what safety gains they have made with their LOSA programme. Through a series of anonymous observations, they identify how a crew operates, uses procedures, and reacts to and manages unplanned events. By collating these observations, they identify common trends and, in cooperation with the pilot workforce, they develop control measures to improve performance.
The JOR explains that, historically, information on events is spread through regional groups and informal networks. The new approach “improves the consistency, timeliness and reach of safety information, allowing operators to determine whether an event could occur in their own operations.” It is also designed to make it easier to track the progress of follow-up activity. The group observes that while this exchange and review process does not replace the manufacturers’ role in providing regulatory-approved guidance on all technical matters, it does mean that a global picture of technical-related issues “is more visible to operators and that they can take action based on more timely information”.
The major airframers have also been involved in the JOR, with Airbus Helicopters singled out as being "extremely helpful".
Within the JOR, “there is a shared belief that a more joined-up approach to auditing and standards can improve clarity and reduce complexity”. The operators describe the response from oil and gas companies as “extremely encouraging”, adding: “They are committed to simplifying standards and to streamlining audit programmes wherever possible. They will maintain their already robust oversight, something they have an absolute right to ensure, and continue to identify best practice within their own areas.”
But what comes next is potentially more interesting. The three firms at the heart of the JOR are driving forward with a London-based follow-on called Heli Offshore. Board members are drawn from the bosses of the five biggest oil and gas support operators – the three above plus US firms ERA Group and PHI – and will be led by chief executive Gretchen Haskins, a former CAA and National Air Traffic Services safety director and an expert in human factors.
The organisation, which will be officially unveiled later this month, will replace the European Helicopter Operators Committee and is open to firms from across the globe. Its aims are broadly similar to those of the JOR and are centred on the timely sharing of best practice.
Source: Flight International
