By Matt Zuccaro -I am sure most of you are familiar with the various accident reduction efforts within the industry—be they Helicopter Association International, FAA, the International Helicopter Safety Team, Tour Operators Program of Safety, Airborne Law Enforcement Association or the European Helicopter Safety Team. The basic premise of these efforts is to reduce the number of accidents that occur within the helicopter community—either the aggregate number or those that involve fatalities.

By Bill Winn - The sound of thunder on the near horizon can herald hope or fear, depending on whether you are a drought-stricken farmer or a Golden Retriever with a serious phobia of both the boom and flash of lightening. My dog Max literally climbs into bed between me and Joyce during every thunderstorm, and lies there shivering uncontrollably until the storm has passed. It's like having one of those vibrating beds you find in cheap motels.

Night flight usage and technology have grown exponentially in the past few years and the dilemma from FAA mandate to have a minimum of 2 crewmembers for NVG flight operations below 300’ AGL has evolved as well. There are two general sides taken in this discussion. The first is the belief that NVG operations can be conducted safely with only the pilot using NVGs, while others believe that NVG flight operations below 300’ AGL is a multi-crew task. Each side of the discussion believes the alternative to be undesirable. In this article, we will take an objective look at this issue.

Actually “we” probably do…or at least one or two of us need a little firmer guidance from the FAA and/or our operator.  When I started flying patients in dire need about forty-one years ago we had very few restrictions.  Of course, it was a combat zone and we were very young and bold. Many years later after losing far too many friends who bravely pushed into the jaws of death, even in peacetime, it is clear to me that one doesn’t become “old and bold” unless we restrict ourselves and exercise restraint and good judgment on every single flight, no matter how critical.  It has also become clear to me that a few of our peers need adult supervision from time to time.

This is a preliminary report of a survey completed by 568 active helicopter EMS pilots in September and October of 2010. The solicitation to pilots to participate in this survey included the following introductory statement:

GOMER: Working in the Gulf of Mexico - Part 2
Article, Photos, & Video by Lyn Burks

In my experience, if you would like to see how serious a helicopter operator is about safety, then look no further than its new hire or recurrent pilot training programs. On one hand, there are programs which barely meet the FAA minimums, with their training program loosely packaged between the covers of Part 135 Operations Specifications. On the other, there are operators who go beyond the OpSpecs and fill the training “tool box” with innovative techniques and dedicated people.

Having been invited in to conduct a week’s worth of program evaluation and EVS training by Wojciech Wozniczka, the LPR Deputy Technical Director.  I had the sincere pleasure to work with this tremendously professional EMS group based out of Warsaw, Poland which had been founded in 2000.  The LPR was a result of the consolidation of several independent EMS units to form a single state (country) medical service with the ability to coordinate all care from one single location.

It wasn’t too many years ago that most helicopter operators in the US conducting EMS operations would hire a pilot, then in company training validate that pilot to commercial standards per the Federal Aviation Regulations, and quickly send him to a field base to conduct EMS operations for a customer without so much as telling him what the EMS mission he was about to perform was all about. It wasn’t a FAA requirement to train to the mission, but it was a requirement to train the pilot to operate the aircraft safely while conducting the mission, whatever that mission might be. That is where a major problem lied and many operators didn’t realize it was an issue that needed to be dealt with.

By Rex Alexander - There are few things in our industry that will generate more emotion and controversy or have people taking sides faster than the topic of hot loading patients. Having been a pilot in the air medical business for 14 years, I have had the opportunity to see the good, the bad, and the ugly from both sides of this issue several hundred times over.

By Rex Alexander - Warning and caution signs that every heliport should have to enhance safety and reduce liability.

Ever since the first helicopter landed and took off from a heliport, we as an industry have worked hard to make the heliport environment as safe as possible.  Whether it is obstruction lighting to illuminate surrounding hazards, a safety net surrounding an elevated heliport, or a windsock to indicate the wind direction, many organizations have done everything feasible to insure safety at their heliports.

By Matt Zuccaro - As you are aware, safety is my favorite topic, as I believe it ultimately affects everything we do in our industry — both in the present and for the future. With this in mind, you would think all owner/operators would have a laser focus on this issue, making it their number one decision criteria. In a perfect world that would be true, but last time I checked not everything we want occurs in the bright reality of day-to-day operations. However, it does not have to be that way.

By Jenna Shepard - There are two main threats to EMS helicopter pilots – weather and darkness, but this really shouldn’t come as a surprise. In 1988, the National Transportation Safety Board investigated 59 helicopter emergency medical services accidents and concluded that low visibility, often caused by poor weather conditions accounted for 61% of all crashes. Since then, little has changed.Although the commercial aviation industry requires that an aircraft be outfitted with everything from weather tracking technologies like onboard radar and GPS to collision avoidance tools, these same requirements are not made of the medical helicopter industry. Furthermore, at a time when air medical companies are being scrutinized due to the sheer number of EMS helicopter crashes and a lack of critical onboard technologies not yet mandated by the FAA, one company is making big strides in the right direction by focusing on weather safety.

By Kerry Sullivan - The article by Susan Parson in the March issue titled “Personal Minimums: A Development Guide” provides a systematic way for pilots to determine realistic safety margins for weather. The EMS operator I fly for requires its pilots to develop their own personal weather minimums which are to be more restrictive than those contained in the Operations Specifications. I have found more restrictive minimums necessary because I do not believe the generally used weather minimums are adequate to keep me out of Inadvertent Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IIMC). Despite strict weather minimums, detailed weather products and annual training in weather and pilot decision making we still have all too-frequent incidents of IIMC. As we are all painfully aware, some of these IIMC occurrences result in fatal accidents.

For those law enforcement agencies that operate in cold weather environments, winter adds dangers we must consider before launching.

Fuel Planning,Endurance and Fuel Problems...by Cem Kurkcu

Fuel,it is essential for any sort of machine to work. However, it really means more than that to pilots, especially for helo pilots who fly over different regions, terrain and water. There is no excuse for fuel problems. Whatever goes wrong with fuel, eventually the helicopter loses substantial power, because piston or turbine engine runs inefficently, the worst situation is an unexpected engine flame out at an unexpetd time,over an unexpected place. This combination is intimidating.

All accidents are not preventable by Anonymous

The cry of helicopter Aviation Safety and Management seems to suggest that all accidents are preventable. While I applaud and support the efforts to reduce accidents within our community and hope serious calamities are minimized, I'm not willing to concede that the concept of Zero Defects is, in the long run, practical or even beneficial. I posit that the very existence of accidents is demonstrative of the predisposition of the human condition, namely our own imperfections. Furthermore, it is the positive response to accidents which is the seed for our greatest improvements and achievements (a case I should not have to make).