Originally Posted by
nomorehelosforme
I flew with Liberty in 2011 and certainly did not have that belt arrangement, might have been a different set up as there were only 2 of us as pax and single pilot in an AS350......as we all know any kind of sight seeing tours, boat, small plane, coaches and helicopters has accidents that make headlines because of numbers involved. Many business owners moan about regulations, but in this day and age maybe it’s time for standards and compliance? I’m aware that standards exist....who is enforcing compliance?
The U.S. FAA has a little problem with this crash. The regulations regarding passenger restraints are...well...vague. They only say that passengers must be seated and belted during takeoff and landing. What constitutes a "takeoff?" Depends on who you talk to. With a helicopter, once the ship lifts off to a hover, the "takeoff" portion of the flight is over. Passengers currently do not have to be belted-in during flight. And of course there is no requirement for a helicopter to have doors. So despite what people might claim or even desperately wish, there is no regulation against the door-off "shoe-selfie" flights. It's a loophole in the regulations of which Liberty and FlyNYON were fully taking advantage.
To keep unsecured passengers from doing a swan dive into the Hudson River from 2,500 feet, Liberty and FlyNYON devised the supplemental restraint with that goofy behind-the-back, screw-type carabiner thing. In somebody's mind, they thought they were being "extra safe" and were going beyond the regulations. Sadly, as we've come to find out, they were wrong. Very, very wrong. I mean, it's indisputable. (Heck, maybe their local FAA guy encouraged them to come up with some "extra" restraint system for the shoe-selfie flights, who knows.)
But now the FAA must feel that they have egg on their face. They certainly don't want to come out and publicly admit the uncomfortable truth. ...Which is that what FlyNYON was doing wasn't illegal, per se. I've done dozens of door-off photo flights in my career, and the photographer-passenger didn't have to have any special credentials or training. We'd put a little strip of duct tape around the seat belt latch to keep it from inadvertently releasing, and we'd pretty much leave it up to the passenger to not fall out. In fact we'd even say to him, "Don't fall out." Personally, I've never lost a passenger.
There is no doubt that the FAA is in the process of creating regulations which would cover these so-called shoe-selfie flights. But since they won't be able to prohibit them completely (in my opinion, anyway), they will instead focus on passenger restraints. They will surely prohibit the use of any restraint that cannot be quickly and easily released by the passenger. Because THAT is what killed those passengers.