By David Learmount in New Delhi
The newly formed Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team (JHSAT) is examining the details of the nearly 600 rotary-wing aircraft accidents that occur annually worldwide to derive a strategy for improving helicopter safety by 80% within 10 years. The plan is based on the strategy successfully used to enhance airline safety since the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) began its work in 1998.
Speaking at the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST) regional conference in New Delhi, India last week, US Federal Aviation Administration rotorcraft manager David Downey said that, despite the lack of flight data or cockpit voice recorders (FDR/CVR) fitted on helicopters, the JHSAT is going to use the accident reports to identify the greatest risks to this industry sector. The task will then be to determine how the industry needs to act to reduce individual operators’ exposure to the identified risks. If it works, he says, the 600 accidents could reduce to 120.
Ideas to improve rotary-wing safety included installing cockpit cameras as the lowest-cost method of putting a form of flight recorder into helicopters, and greater training credits to be given by aviation authorities for the use of advanced flight-training devices, rather than insistence on full-flight simulator time.
Kevin Connell, vice-president of Bell Helicopter’s XworX, said that the manufacturer will set up a training organisation in India next year and is negotiating with potential partners in the venture.
India’s fleet of 140 civil helicopters is predicted to grow by 15% a year, says the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The industry reports 14 months without a rotary-wing accident, says head of the DGCA’s helicopter group P K Chattopadhya, but between 2001 and early 2005 there was a surge in serious and fatal accidents, 2003 being the worst year with seven.
Source: Flight International
