The European Helicopter Safety Team (EHEST) says a lack of safety data is hindering its efforts to gather the information that would allow it to develop a strategy for improving industry-wide helicopter safety performance.
Meanwhile lightweight, low-cost flight data monitoring systems that could remedy this situation are expected to be available soon, but it emerged at this week's UK Royal Aeronautical Society's European Rotorcraft Forum that the major regulatory agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are admitting reluctance to mandate their use, hoping for voluntary adoption by operators.
EHEST is Europe's regional contribution to a spreading global effort launched as the International Helicopter Safety Team in 2005 to improve helicopter safety by 80% by 2016. The European Helicopter Safety Analysis Team (EHSAT) expects to provide its first report on its analysis of existing regional data at the Helitech conference and exhibition in Portugal next month.
A major component in the lack of information about all but the most serious helicopter accidents - and the total absence of data about incidents - is that there is no requirement in Europe or anywhere else for any kind of data recorder to be fitted to aircraft with fewer than 10 seats, says Michel Masson, EHEST's leader at the European Aviation Safety Agency. That parameter includes the vast majority of helicopters in civil operation, whether private or commercial.
A solution to the lack of helicopter safety data - particularly from the lighter-weight end of the market - may be at hand. An engineer at Aberdeen University, Scotland, has developed two recording devices that weigh less than 1kg (2lb) and cost less than $500, so could be candidates for fitment to helicopters, even lightweight ones (see box for detail). One is a flight data recorder capable of storing more than 1,000h of data, the other a cockpit video recorder that would pick up all the visual data on the instrument panel but cost less to install. However the engineer, Alan Barclay, admits there is huge resistance among pilot bodies to cockpit video monitoring in all aircraft categories, despite backing for it from highly respected bodies like the Flight Safety Foundation.
Source: Flight International
