Originally Posted by
Musician
I am speculating that the NTSB is using the opportunity which this high-profile case provides to push their old TAWS and "FDR/CVR for light commercial aircraft" recommendations in the hopes that they may get political traction this time when they hadn't before. From their perspective, even if this wasnt a situation where TAWS would have helped, situations where it will are sure to arise again. And understanding more clearly how light aircraft accidents occur ought to help save lives in the long run, too, that is the NTSB's reason to exist. I don't believe this push on the old recommendations expresses any opinion on this particular accident.
P.S.: From the NtSB's "Most Wanted" list: "Part 135 operators must implement safety management systems that include a flight data monitoring program," while this doesn't require a FDR per se, but rather a device where the data can be more easily downloaded from, the collected data is commonly copied off theFDR interface. This means that adding a FDR to a cockpit that doesn't have one (yet) might be a crucial step towards introducing that kind of safety management system.
TAWS is great for fixed wing, slightly less so for VMC ops in helicopters. The Terrain display as I said earlier is great.
A QAR/FDM sounds like a great move, for airlines. For most helicopters, when you transition from fixed to rotary (lobotomy assists) the first thing you note is that stuff happens at a different pace.You can be happy one moment and sitting in debris the next, so being aware of what you are doing is highly desirable in RW ops. trend monitoring doesn't necessarily give any signal of trends towards badness. Monitoring necessary would be flight controls, performance, attitude, power, in order to meaningfully understand what is happening, and then after that effort, it would help to know why you have a kitset, but it would not give a great deal of suggestion as to what your actual risks are. Risks of CFIT etc can be established quite well using COTS software already, to replay the info captured on an ipad. We do that for all of our jet flights already. Helicopter events are operational, Environmental, crew process, or mechanical. The latter is found by investigation, and basically never comes up on a QAR. The former are identifiable by review of readily accessible information from the aircraft, off the ipad, or from video, and that would give more info than a QAR would ever do. Don't get me wrong, QAR is great for RPT operations, where the profile of the operation is formalised and standardised to a high level of repeatability. Helicopters, ain't that. Every flight is it's own little enterprise. Personally, I have established a number of RPT and large aircraft SMS and QAR programs, and separately had made my own data recording system for flight test on small helicopters, and I would say there is not much happiness to be gained by a helicopter QAR system. Go buy an ipad, Stratus or similar, Foreflight or Garmin Pilot, and replay with CloudAhoy or similar. Add a couple of Go Pros, as they are just neat anyway. Or don't.
A helicopter operation is unlike RPT jets, and to think that they are, is myopic.
Personally, I love flying helicopters, for all of the same reasons, they need care and attention and tell you immediately if you are doing things right and even faster when you do things wrong.
A friend of mine as a young pilot was handed the keys to a brand new H-269C. The owner admonished him to "take care, it's a brand new chopper, don't bend it". "Yes, Sir!". The owner walked back to the office on the side of the hangar as the new pilot cranked up the blender. The owner hadn't touched the door knob by the time it took for ground resonance to have completed kitset-ing the shiny new toy. What is the trend monitoring tell you about that? dynamic roll over? LTE? RBS? VRS? CFIT? These things are identifiable without QAR, and to an extent, QAR wold not identify them unless you had an expert system.
More than in fixed wing, helicopter operations are stochastic in nature, and trending is of less value in an SMS program. But, if SMS makes one feel warm and fuzzy, then by all means, go ahead. My opinion is it is akin to the "Emperor has no clothes"; use the time to review personally or peer review the cloudahoy data, or go pro, that is where the truth is hidden.