Originally Posted by
aa777888
I was able to fact-check the 42 fatals in 5 minutes, but I continue to fail to find any source of fleet or model operating hours data. Does anyone know where I can obtain that?
The FAA data is from the General Aviation Survey and was only obtained via a FOIA request by the LA Times.
https://github.com/datadesk/helicopt...notebook.ipynb
The FAA's General Aviation and Part 135 Activity Survey
In response to a public records request made by The Times, the FAA provided a decade of its annual estimates about the activity of America's most common helicopter models. This data is not published online. The records provided to The Times were manually input into a spreadsheet and standardized using the same crosswalk as the NTSB data.
The tidy-faa notebook filters the FAA data down to population counts and flight-hour estimates for models that have appeared in all ten years of survey data.
Substituting Robinson's flight hours estimate
In an email to The Times, Robinson Helicopter Company President Kurt Robinson said he believed the FAA survey underestimates the R44's flight hours. He wrote:
Please note, the fatal accident rate of 1.61per 100k flight hours used to compare the R44 with other model helicopters from 2006 to 2016 does not reflect the actual usage rate of the R44 helicopter. Your estimated flight hours are based on the FAA General Aviation Survey, which is a voluntary survey and more representative of larger commercial operators, not the U.S. helicopter industry as a whole. Robinson’s own calculations, based on R44 production, overhaul records, and time-in-service reports, conservatively estimate total flight hours to be 3,260,787 hours, 38% more than the FAA estimate.