Originally Posted by
mickjoebill
In respect to the nature and reliability of the flappy bits, up to a few years ago when I stopped keeping records, in terms of absolute number of fatalities or injuries, the R44 news has the best safety record for aerial filming of any helicopter in regular use.
Not a fair comparison. Robinson's produced perhaps 50 Newscopters? ENG flying is generally low risk, high altitude fairly static work. Much aerial filming work is low altitude higher risk work, that naturally will lead itself to a higher incident rate. Additionally, as there aren't a great deal of aerial platforms that can be mounted to the R44, most production work is done with AStars/TwinStars/206/407's. That will also skew the statistics.
While the R66 may make a good filming aircraft, it will take the STCs some time to catch up, which will keep the incident rate low as the R66 simply won't be widely used for some time.