The US Federal Aviation Administration has been getting a lot of stick from this column recently and we haven't finished yet.

The agency has a tradition - admirable in concept - of trying to persuade industry to improve its practices voluntarily rather than regulating. Very American, very democratic, and sometimes very ineffective.

In August 2004 the FAA set up a programme to persuade the rapidly growing helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) sector to put its house in order because the number of fatal and serious accidents it was suffering was unacceptable. There have been seven fatal HEMS accidents this year, killing 28 people, so the voluntary strategy seems to have been ignored by the industry.

So now the FAA has decided to regulate. Sort of. It has told HEMS operators that they should get weather forecasts before departure and only fly under visual flight rules when visual meteorological conditions prevail. Does the FAA really mean that US HEMS operators have been ignoring the basics of aviation practice, and the FAA let them operate like that?

The agency seems to forget that its first duty is not to the industry, but to its customers. In this case the customers need rescuing - and they also have a right to expect to survive the rescue.

At the first Montreal International Helicopter Safety Seminar in 2005 the helicopter industry belatedly accepted that it needed to get its house in order and began determinedly, via the joint helicopter safety analysis/safety implementation teams, to operate a data-driven campaign to improve safety.

This confirmed that the helicopter sector consists mainly of two- to four-ship operators that are highly individualistic and believe they do not have the resources to set up anything recognisable as a safety culture. Crashes are a way of life for them, and that doesn't seem to be changing.

There is another fine American tradition enunciated by President Theodore Roosevelt early last century: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The FAA certainly follows the first piece of advice in that sentence, but where's the big stick?

Source: Flight International