Originally Posted by
MikeNYC
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.
I refered the R44 news accident info as "raw numbers" hoping to avoid a statistical comparison which is impossible.
I didn't refer to regular R44 with side mount which, despite the apparent precariousness, has nil accidents up to 2015 as far as I can tell.
There are a few R44 news in use for production work outside of the USA, (with nil accidents by the way.)
What STCs will have to catch up?
How will the R66 fly with a nose mount and up to 50lb payload?
Mickjoebill