Significant helicopter safety performance improvement is definitely achievable. That much is clear from the impressive quantity and quality of work done on rotary-wing safety data analysis between the previous International Helicopter Safety Symposium in 2007 and the one in Montreal last week.
This work has not been done only in the USA and Europe, even if that is where the vast majority of the world's helicopters work. Painstaking study and analysis, intended in all cases to establish the patterns of circumstances behind thousands of helicopter accidents, has also been carried out in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is fascinating - although not altogether 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 in countries on opposite sides of the planet echo each other almost perfectly.
The facts and wisdom in one accident report normally have little effect on the way the world aviates. But distilled wisdom from thousands has real power. This potential energy, however, has to be channelled and harnessed effectively, and that is what regional Joint Helicopter Safety Implementation teams under the International Helicopter Safety Team 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 should think again. World safety standards and people's expectations are rising inexorably, but until the IHST came along in 2005 the rotary-wing industry's safety record had stagnated 30 years ago. Unless helicopter safety improves, rotorcraft travel will not reach its real potential. It will remain a niche activity, shunned wherever there is an alternative.
Those who use helicopter services have power. Hospitals that contract for helicopter emergency medical services have a duty to specify the operational standards, capability and equipment they expect and not to settle for less. Oil companies like Exxon, for example, 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 guidance from the IHST, that the processes involved in becoming safer are good for business and the bottom line.
Source: Flight International
