Reduce Helicopter Crashes by 80 Percent

01/10/09

Slack & Davis aviation attorney Ladd Sanger comments on helicopter safety in the Beaumont Enterprise.

International Team Plans to Reduce Helicopter Crashes by 80 Percent
Reporter: Kyle Peveto, Beaumont Enterprise

After a year of high-profile fatal helicopter crashes across the nation, safety experts insist the crafts are safe for widespread use, but they need to become much safer.

Helicopters crash at a rate three times that of commercial airliners, according to federal crash statistics, but an international safety team aims to lower that rate by 80 percent within eight years.

“I would definitely say it’s safe,” said Rhett Flater, a former Marine Corps pilot and a member of the International Helicopter Safety Team, a task force composed of government agencies from the Americas and Europe along with industry safety groups. “I fly helicopters all the time, and I do not fear losing my life.”

Helicopters are used for every situation that requires maneuverability and flying into a tight space - landing on offshore oil platforms, following traffic in an urban area and rushing patients to hospitals.

Some oil workers who fly to their jobs on platforms in the Gulf of Mexico think little of stepping into a helicopter to begin seven days of work.

“I always had compared flying to just riding in the pickup,” said Chad Gerald, an offshore worker.

Gerald is the brother of Cody Smalts, who died with three other oil operators and their pilot early Dec. 11 when their helicopter crashed south of Sabine Pass en route to an unmanned platform.

When properly maintained and flown responsibly, helicopters are as safe as his work truck, he said.

Most helicopter crashes - 70 percent, according to the International Helicopter Safety Team - are caused by the human element. Either the pilot is poorly trained, overloaded with duties and unable to pay attention or the helicopter is poorly designed, said Flater, executive director of the American Helicopter Society International.

But flown by responsible operators with well-maintained equipment, they become as safe as any commercial airplane, Flater said.

Because of the varied landscapes and waterways throughout the region, helicopters often are used. Their crashes affect law enforcement and blue collar workers alike.

In September 2004, a Beaumont Police Department officer, Sgt. James Michael “Mike” Lane, died when the helicopter he was flying in crashed into Sabine Lake. Reports said the pilot, a Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy, incorrectly set the craft’s altimeter.

Last Sunday, six offshore oil workers and two pilots died when a Sikorsky S-76C helicopter owned by PHI Inc. crashed in a marsh in Terrebonne Parish, La.

Several high-profile helicopter crashes caught the public’s attention in 2008:

–A Maryland State Police helicopter went down in September in bad weather and killed the pilot, an onboard state trooper, two medical workers and a car crash victim being flown from the scene of a wreck.

–Two emergency medical service helicopters collided near an Arizona hospital in June, killing two pilots, two patients and two paramedics.

–An emergency medical service helicopter operated by PHI Inc. crashed in Sam Houston National Forest while en route to Houston in June. A nurse, a paramedic, a pilot and a patient died.

Last year was the deadliest on record for emergency medical helicopter crashes, when 28 died, according to a Houston Chronicle study.

About seven people die a year, on average, when air taxi helicopters bound for oil platforms crash into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Helicopter Safety Advisory Conference, which is composed of several helicopter companies flying in the Gulf.

In January 2006, governmental agencies and helicopter companies from Europe and the Americas launched the International Helicopter Safety Team, which aimed at reducing the worldwide helicopter crash rate by 80 percent by 2016.

That seemingly lofty goal is achievable, Flater said, because the largest, most responsible helicopter operators have crash rates 80 percent lower than the rest of their field.

Currently, helicopters crash at a rate of eight per 100,000 hours of flight, Flater said. For-hire operators - called Federal Aviation Administration part 135 operators - such as tour companies, emergency medical services teams and air taxis that provide transit to offshore oil platforms, have a lower rate, at 2.5 per 100,000 hours.

“That is still much too high,” Flater said.

Commercial airlines crash less, he said, at a rate of 0.15 per 100,000 hours in flight.

“We know (the 80 percent reduction) is achievable, but we have to understand the circumstances of the accidents first,” he said.

Flater said one-pilot crews are often overworked - paying attention to the instruments and conditions while flying and using the radio - leading to human error in crashes. Ladd Sanger, a Dallas aviation attorney and helicopter pilot, agrees.

“You know that pilot error is a significant factor of a number of accidents,” he said. “If you have two professionally trained pilots, both instrument-trained, on board the helicopter, the statistics and history have shown you dramatically increase the safety and decrease the chance of pilot error.”

Sanger insists that all helicopters flying over inhospitable terrain or open ocean should have twin-engine crafts, such as the Sikorsky that crashed in Louisiana last week, instead of the popular, single-engine Bell 206, which was flown in the Dec. 11 crash near Sabine Pass.

“A number of single-engine helicopters have had engine failure over the Gulf of Mexico,” Sanger said. “When you are operating over inhospitable terrain, or open ocean, it would be a good idea to have redundancy in the engines. They are reliable, but they do fail.”

But Flater disagrees because single-engine helicopters’ rotors can automatically rotate if their engines fail and land without crashing.

The international safety team’s committees are reviewing helicopter crash data from thousands of flights, Flater said, and the committees plan to release a study later this year and recommend paths to decreasing the number of crashes.

“If we reduce the accident rate by 50 percent, I’ll be overjoyed,” Flater said. “Anything would be worthwhile.”

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