Want to hear something shocking?  According to the American Journal of Clinical Medicine (Winter 2009 issue) after assessing past statistics then projecting them forward, they predicted that if you fly in a HEMS helicopter and do that job for twenty years, you face a 40 percent chance of losing your life.

Did you wake up today and think to yourself, “I will go to work and crash my helicopter?” Writing it looks absolutely ridiculous and I am sure that it reads equally ridiculous. Although no one plans an accident, I am confident that we can all agree that accidents do happen. Given that several occur each month, we can also agree that they occur on a regular basis.

The problem is that none of us, including me, has an impending feeling that it will actually happen to us.

It is no secret the civil NVG industry was born from military utilization of night vision technology. The acceptance and eventual proliferation of Night Vision Goggles (“NVG”s) into the civil aviation industry is not without bumps and bruises. The path to acceptance by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and civil industry operators alike, has required education, patience, and compromise. Today, nearly fifteen years after the first civil operator was approved by the FAA to utilize NVGs, the civil industry continues to be plagued with issues related to regulatory oversight. In this article, we will discuss: past efforts to standardize the civil industry; how those efforts support today’s NVG industry; and efforts taking place today to ensure a safe, healthy, and prosperous future for NVG operators and regulators.

How’s this for an observation? On a global scale the USA is not a role model for HEMS even though the commercial concept of a helicopter air ambulance began right here in America.  Does that shock you?  It shouldn’t if you’ve watched over the years as I have the appalling accident rate the industry has suffered over a third of a century.

The helicopter pilot works in an amazing, ever-changing environment. The skills necessary to accomplish the task at hand for most commercial or even private helicopter flight operations require a high level of concentration, ability and finesse just to name a few. (social skills excluded)

It was getting late in the afternoon and I had just finished a days flying in Key West, Florida. It had been one of those strange, hazy gray, overcast, blustery days, with the wind steady out of the east at 15 – 20 knots. It looked like it wanted to storm any minute, but never really did with the exception of an occasional spit of rain here and there.

As many of you know, I am passionate about safety and unreasonable regulatory and political initiatives, but I thought it might be nice to discuss my other passion — the people that make up this great industry of ours. Besides, if I think about regulations, legislation, politics, and life inside the Beltway too much, my head hurts, my stomach aches, and my brain turns to mush.

Mention maintenance and helicopter in the same sentence and you get another “M” word - more money.  Well okay, make that two “M” words.  However, complying with your maintenance requirements doesn’t have to mean writing a blank check and hoping for the best.

Helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) provide life-saving transports for the critically ill or injured. However, the rising number of U.S. HEMS accidents over the past decade is cause for serious questions as to their operational safety. For this reason a national effort is underway to reduce HEMS accidents.

From managers to maintainers to pilots to crewmembers, tablets and smartphones are rapidly working their way into the hands of the helicopter industry. Although the devices themselves are cool, it’s the even cooler apps designed for them that make us carry our mobile devices with us everywhere we go……including the cockpit.

Assaults on our industry have become interwoven into the very fabric that constitutes our daily activities. Don’t get me wrong, I welcome discussions on relevant issues such as safety and noise issues, and appreciate the opportunity to improve in these areas.

As a measure of something’s quality or worth you could safely use longevity as a yardstick.   I am lucky to own and fly a Robinson R-22 that has an early serial number.  N9015V was the 11th R-22 to roll off the assembly line in Torrance, California on January 19, 1980.  What makes this fact special to me is that I had been hired by Frank Robinson in 1979 to work for him as a mechanic. I was fresh out of A&P school and as green a helicopter mechanic as a Wenatchee apple.  Frank had me assigned to work with Dave Akamine who was one of the first mechanics at Robinson Helicopter Company.  Dave would try to keep me out of trouble.

Advancements in technology and material make modern simulators more realistic and effective than ever. Regulating this new generation of synthetic training devices has also taken the first steps in keeping up with the changes. This article details some of the technology advancements in simulation and looks at the future of simulators as well.

It’s my third day in Vegas, and Heli-Success is over now, but I don’t want to leave the meeting room.  I’m hanging out as people are packing up the banners and booths and I’m saying goodbye to friends I probably won’t see again until Heli-Expo. When a suggestion is made to go grab a beer, my suitcase and I are the first ones there!
 

Often times I hear stories of how a helicopter company in Florida charters a Jet Ranger for $550.00 an hour or so, and another company in Texas charters his A Star for $600.00 per hour and this has caused me to think, do these people really know their cost of operations and do they have a realistic break even point?

In the 1930s, a German engineer by the name of Heinrich Focke designed and built a cutting edge helicopter more practical and capable than anything previously developed.  This helicopter, the Fw 61, would shatter the existing helicopter world records and help set the standards of performance and control by which future helicopters would be measured.