Originally Posted by
MeddlMoe
The numbers per flight hour for helicopters are somewhere between commercial airlines and private small planes. If you go by traveled passenger miles there is a huge difference between commercial airlines and helicopters.
Not surprising, seeing that most accidents happen at the departure or approach-and-landing phases, but sector times and lengths, and passengers per aircraft, are far greater in commercial airliners than in helicopters. A one-hour sector in a 100-seat airliner at 300mph gets you 30,000 passenger-miles - a half-hour sector in a 4-seat helicopter at 100mph gets you 200 passenger-miles - but each aircraft does just one takeoff and one landing. Numbers per sector would be more useful.
waterways are dangerous places to land with a helicopter.
Surely less dangerous than the streets and houses of a city centre. As I understand it, the restriction of single-engine helicopters to waterways in major conurbations like London is not for the safety of the helicopter but for the safety of the people underneath.