PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - EC135 HEMS accident in Norway
View Single Post
Old 19th Jan 2014, 20:28
  #71 (permalink)  
rotorspeed
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Europe
Posts: 535
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
SASless

Do you really expect answers to the questions you pose, asking about the level of commitment the management has to training and how much of their training budget goes on related training? Pretty much impossible to answer meaningfully, I'm sure. And not necessarily that relevant anyway - where a country spends its taxpayers' money will vary according many local factors.

You say your system works and I'm sure it does - to an extent. According to the interesting video link posted by Non-PC Plod on wire strikes, they are still the number one cause of fatal helicopter accidents in the US. And I'm sure some will be EMS.

You might like to think about the differences between jimf671's Scotland to your country - it might just not be as simple as the UK needing to follow your model. I can quite see why jim says it would be very difficult to train anyone on the ground likely to involved in an incident requiring an EMS helicopter to mark wires, as I understand the US EMS support team are good at doing. Perhaps it is partly because Scotland and the UK as a whole has so much less EMS activity than the US - I'd guess most police personnel will never be directly involved in an EMS helo landing in their whole careers, which makes applying more resources to training for marking overhead wires hard to justify. Surely too this is not something that can be done lightly - if ground crew are going to do it, the job's got to be done well or it could be more hazardous than nothing.

Of course I can see it's a big help to have wires marked on the ground, but just how much reliance should the helo crews put on this? One would have thought look out must be as vigilant as if none were marked - because some may be missed by the ground crew. And anyway, this US video says that 40% of wire strikes occur with wires the pilot knew were there.

One would have thought there would be detailed mapping of all power cables by the electricity boards - if not there surely should be. Could these maps not be obtained and over-laid on flight charts for vulnerable flight ops - eg police and EMS?
rotorspeed is offline