Rotorcraft Asia-Pacific Business Association Safety News.
August 2021 USHST monthly safety report. The US Helicopter Safety Team continues to work on the implementation of 16 helicopter-safety enhancements developed through data-driven analysis of 104 fatal accidents. The report shows that the USA has 12,000+ civilian helicopters, flown by 32,000+ pilots. The USHST uses a rolling five-year average of fatal accidents. For example, from 2017 to 2021 the fatal rate was 0.72/100,000 flying hours. This was the result of their overall accident rate being 3.83/100,000 flying hours.
The previous five years 2016-2020 the fatal rate was 0.69/100,000 flying hours the result of an accident rate of 3.78/100,000. The USHST’s goal is reduce the 5-year average fatal accident rate to 0.55/100,00 by 2025. This would need an accident rate of 2.93/100,000.
Top three highest accident groups are: Private operators; HEMS and agricultural operations. This is somewhat different to Australia & New Zealand.
APAC readers may ask how does the US loss rates compare with Australia? An ATSB report 2014–2019 shows the general aviation accident then was 8.14/100,000 hours. More than twice the USA. But the fatal rate was less at 0.68/100,000 hours. A surprise here – maybe caused by the greater percentage of slower light helicopter accidents. Mustering folk are usually going slower than a turbine driver going IIMC?
Any thoughts on this?