Helicopter operations make up a significant proportion of business aviation activity, but there has been no independent industry risk profile prepared for this sector as there has been for the helicopter emergency services (HEMS) part of the US market.
Since civil helicopters, on average, have a higher accident rate than fixed-wing passenger operations including the on-demand charter market, it is worth looking at the risk assessment of the HEMS sector, if only to understand what might be appropriate for assessing other categories of civil helicopter operations.
The HEMS industry risk profile was carried out by the Flight Safety Foundation and Aerosafe Risk Management on behalf of the Foundation of Air Medical Research and Education. It was ordered because of a subjective judgement: namely that "the current accident and fatality rate in HEMS transport is unacceptable to industry as a whole, individual operators, regulators and the public".
The profile identified eight "very high" risks relating to US HEMS operations, ranging from the lack of a national framework for the organisation and governance of the sector, through an unrealistically low reimbursement model for paying operators, to a lack of sector oversight.
There are 18 more "high-risk" issues identified in the regional, local and operator-level management of the sector. Basically, the study concludes that HEMS is conducted in a disorganised and uncoordinated way. A fatal collision between two HEMS helicopters approaching Flagstaff Medical Center, Arizona in June 2008 epitomised many of the identified risks, for each of which the risk profile puts forward a "risk treatment strategy".
Back to the business sector. Relatively few large corporations own a helicopter for business travel. There are rather more people who own a company and also a helicopter - particularly a light one - that they fly themselves on business trips. But most business trips in helicopters are flown in hired or chartered machines.
One of the identified risks associated with HEMS flights that transfers to all other civil helicopter operations in the USA is this: "Current safety analysis and monitoring [of HEMS] is not data-driven, leading to an inability for the regulator or the industry itself to have an accurate picture of the real safety situation."
That is true of the whole gamut of non-military helicopter operations within the USA, and if it is true in that country - where the Federal Aviation Administration and the Helicopter Association International keep better records than can be found in most other parts of the world, the question arises as to how business users can possibly know what risk they are running when they charter a helicopter flight.
It is this sort of situation - the lack of data on helicopter accidents - that the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST) has been trying to address since it was set up in 2005. At its foundation the IHST's operating methodology was based on the same subjective decision that caused the HEMS risk profile study to be commissioned - that helicopter accident rates were "unacceptable", and too little data was available about both operations and accidents.
So the IHST gave leadership to a gradually expanding international effort aimed at setting up regional teams intended to establish the patterns of circumstances behind thousands of helicopter accidents worldwide. The first studies to yield early results have been carried out in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe (co-ordinated by the European Aviation Safety Agency), India, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, USA and the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. These are ongoing, extending the data bank of detailed knowledge about why helicopter accidents happen.
It is not surprising to discover, using hard data unsullied by preconceptions, that patterns repeat all over the world. Helicopters crash for the same reasons everywhere. Pilots make the same mistakes or misjudgements, and even the league tables prioritising the factors behind accidents echo each other almost perfectly in countries on opposite sides of the planet.
The facts and wisdom in one accident report normally have little effect on the way the world aviates. But distilled wisdom from thousands of them has real power, and it is this power that the IHSS wants to bring to bear on regulators, operators and insurers.
It may be a coincidence that global helicopter safety has begun to improve since 2005 for the first time in a generation, because it was not until 2007 that active measures began to emanate from the IHST's findings. But maybe it is connected to the IHST's early efforts, just by the fact that the work that the team's work - begun four years ago - created awareness of what could be achieved, and perhaps it sowed the early seeds of a new determination to improve.
This potential energy, however, has to be channelled and harnessed effectively, and that is what regional Joint Helicopter Safety Implementation Teams all over the world, under the IHST, are poised to do.
If there are any in the helicopter industry - from manufacturers to operators - who think they need take no part in this, they will find they have to think again. World safety standards and people's expectations of all forms of air travel safety are rising inexorably, but until the IHST came along in 2005 the rotary-wing industry's safety record had stagnated nearly 30 years ago.
Unless helicopter safety improves, rotorcraft travel risks not reaching its real potential. It may remain a niche activity, shunned wherever there is an alternative.
The IHST wants those who use helicopter services to realise that they have power. For example, hospitals that contract third party operators for helicopter emergency medical services have a duty to their patients and medical teams to specify the operational standards, capability and equipment they expect, and not to settle for less.
Companies that hire helicopters for business travel should do the same, but few do. Oil companies such as Exxon, however, now specify that any offshore oil support operator they contract must operate a safety management system.
Finally, operators large and small will find, if they examine the free toolkits available from the IHST, that the processes involved in becoming safer - scaled according to the size of the company - are relatively easy to apply.
The IHST also points out that adopting better safety practices is also good for business and the bottom line - unlike continuing to be a relatively high-risk organisation in the eyes of potential customers, insurers, and regulators.
Source: Flight Daily News
