500 Hours Turbine

[dzeroplus]

Is there any evidence that pilots with 500 hours (seems to the “in” figure) turbine experience have less incidents/accidents than a pilot with a couple of hundred hours turbine or even a high time piston engine pilot with little or no turbine experience.

I am fully aware that the more experience you have, all things being equal, you are less likely to balls up because you may have had a few close calls in your earlier days.

Who came up with this magical 500 hours figure in the first place?

[gulliBell]

You will find it's common practice for the insurers of turbine helicopters to specify a minimum turbine engine experience for pilots approved to fly the insured helicopter. It can be 500 hours, or 1000 hours, or even a hundred hours or less. Lower turbine experience levels for "approved" pilots usually mean higher insurance premiums and vice versa. It works the other way as well, high time turbine pilots with little piston engine time might have trouble being covered by the insurance on piston engined helicopters (I know I did, I have almost 5000 turbine hours but was recently denied approval by an insurance company from flying a Robbie because I didn't have enough piston time!!). I don't think its any big deal flying a turbine, you just start it the way it says in the RFM, just like you start a piston the way it says in the RFM. Only difference being if you stuff up starting a turbine the repair bill is considerably more expensive!

[Nigel Osborn]

When I was Chief Pilot of a medium size helicopter charter company in Tasmania that mainly had operations in the Tassie bush/mountains and the West Australian desert, in order to get the insurance costs to an acceptable level we had to have pilots with 2000 hours total and 500 on turbine. We had no piston helis, just 206 & 350. We also had to pay a loading until a pilot had 100 hours on type as the insurance companies reckoned that statistically that is where most incidents occured.
This meant that whenever I endorsed a new pilot, regardless of his total time, we would try to put him on a busy charter job to get 100 hours as quickly as possible so that the loading could be cancelled.

[WLM]

It is quite interesting to compare the insurers in Oz with the US or CA. In Oz, they want a minimum of 500 hours on turbine as mentioned in the above thread, yet overseas, you can progress to a turbine as low as 150 hours TT. In Europe, you start a commercial licence on piston training then finish it on turbine for the test...
Oz insurers need to examine the issue as experienced turbine pilots are getting older and retiring. The so called experience required on turbine is not readily available by employers, as they have to meet draconic fees if they take a low time turbine pilot. As an example, I had to start my own business to build up the magical 500 turbine hours, and wear $42K in insurance with an excess of $80K if I had a mishap????
Employers are not the main culprits here, merely the insurance companies holding them at ransom.

[Robbo Jock]

I've been wondering for a little while now, how soon the pool of "employable pilots" will run out: Insurance companies are insisting on fairly high numbers of (particularly) turbine hours and the guys with those sorts of hours are moving towards retirement (I know, I know, you're not all crumblies, folks ) and the folks without those kinds of hours can't get them ('cos the insurance companies are insisting ...)

It's unlikely that the insurance companies will reduce their experience requirements, probably more likely that they'll keep increasing them. So, at some point, no-one will be able to insure the only pilots they can employ (or find the only pilots they can insure).