Safety Record: Heli v Fixed
 

Without wishing to set off the old hare, about helicopters being inherently dangerous, we have enough experience here to assess the safety record of helicopters since their invention.

What is the safety record of helicopters compared to fixed wing.

What's the least biased parameter to use for a measure?

Perhaps, reported accidents per hours flown, or fatalities per hours flown?

I can't think of any metric that would provide a meaningful comparison of the relative safety of FW and RW operations.

I agree with DaveReidUK...there's no meaningful comparison.

However, as an unscientific observation, in many decades of continuous use of aircraft, starting with being ferried around by the RAF in FW and the RN in RW, then working for airlines and/or airports ever since and using civil aircraft a lot as a result, and all the while flying myself in FW including gliders, I have been in four genuinely life-threatening situations.

Two were due to my own stupidity when flying myself, and two were in helicopters.

I have remained alive by being more careful than I used to be, and most importantly, by avoiding helicopters as much as possible.

I can see the difficulty, so let's try limiting the database to non-commercial and non-military flights.

That should make the passenger carrying capacity more even.

What would be interesting is to have helicopter pilot's unprejudiced opinions, if possible.

Do heli-pilots feel safer flying fixed wing?

Try asking the question on the Rotorheads forum.

I think that the stats (and using the contents of the AAIB hangar as a marker) would be based far more on the experience levels of the pilots than the type of aviation. Hang-gliders and microlights/ultra light and gyrocopters give AAIB most trade. The hours flown in rotary in support of gas and oil drilling all year round in some pretty cack weather at times do much to demonstrate the safety of helicopter passenger carrying. Across the board flight safety culture and technology is having dividends in safety. The problem is that an airliner loss such as a TU154 will muddy the fiqures especially if a fundamentally safe aeroplane is lost due to insufficient maintenance or crew currency. How different from the seventies when aeroplanes seemed averse to flight and attracted to terra firma in small pieces.

Apart from the unimpeachable facts that no other form of transport yet devised by mankind has saved more lives than it has taken, or that for many years the B206 Jetranger was the safest flying machine on the FAA register there is no case to ask, nor answer.

Despite helos being dependant on several dynamic systems essential to maintain controlled flight and planks are not there ought to be corresponding failure stats. The B206 safety case suggests that if it is present at all it isn't very significant.
There are some helos with a shocking safety (ie accident) record - like Gazelles, despite when in Military hands were one of the safest aircraft ever so the crash stats aren't a useful guide to safety of the aircraft itself, and believe me we used to do things in those old Gaz pieces that few civvies would have thought of. Its the people the aircraft attract that cause the stats, not the airframes.

The Mitsubishi MU2 is apparently a perfectly safe aircraft - if you treat it right. But then a Piper Cub is a brutal killer if you don't...(not quite sure how you'd achieve that but it must be possible). The Starfighter only got called the widowmaker in some countries, not others. Why do you suppose that was?

How can anyone make a scientific statement on such an open question?

Any aircraft is as safe as YOU make it.

And n response to the "safety aids" alluded to below. What the f*** are they? Things that prevent accidents - Oh yes? how? In confined site? Give over!

Fire extinguishers and fearnought suits are for after the accident, they have no bearing on safety as understood by prevention of the accident in the first place. In my book that stuff is response equipment, not safety related.

Hours flown is rather misleading. I suggest the number of take-offs and landings ought to be considered. There could be several of these in the space of one flying hour. Very few of these would be at airfields with all the safety trimmings in place. Most of these (I'm thinking of my own experiences in Ulster) would have been in fairly confined spaces with no safety aids and as mentioned above in every type of weather, day or night. Not swinging the lamp, just giving an opinion.

The famous saying among J3 pilots--and I occasionally fly a friend's--is that the Cub is just barely, minimally fast enough to kill you.

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Hasel Checks, for some sort of genuine compare i'm thinkin you would have to compare simular flight op's, e.g IFR heli and fixed wing op's from airport to airport, or perhaps heli and fixed wing mustering op's.... tho, even in mustering, fixed wing dont cover all the terrain types that helicopters do.





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Perfect illustration of my point - you can't possibly make an assertion like that without indicating what benchmark you are using to define "safest" and explaining how it can apply with equal validity to fixed-wing and rotary-wing aviation.

On a more sensible note than my post earlier, I was involved years ago in the aftermath of a very nasty accident when a Bell 212 (I think) suffered a stopped rotor at 1,000ft over the Gulf (near Das) with 14 SOB or thereabouts. My task involved, among others things, listening to the ATC tape, which was dreadful.

The point struck me then, and still does, that what would be a minor problem in a FW aircraft very easily becomes a fatal one in a helicopter. On that occasion the rotor brake malfunctioned and caused the gear box to freeze, as I recall, which for a helicopter is the same as the wings coming off a fixed wing aircraft if an engine stops.

It's the vulnerability to upsets that makes a helicopter intrinsically less safe (note; NOT unsafe) than fixed wing. I have been in a number of auto-rotations, deliberate and unwanted, and give me a FW forced landing every time.

You might change your mind if a gatepost catches you between the legs on landing your FW at 60 kts.

In a RW you can often autorotate to a stop first, if necessary, then land.

The old adage "It is better to stop and then try to land than it is to land and then try to stop" is good for me.

And although might seem to presuppose a certain level of skill in stopping before you land it makes no different assumption in the land/stop case.

Which, when faced with a bollock level fencepost in the chosen field would you prefer?

Me? I hae nae doots!

Sound excruciating....an amusing contradiction of terms if ever there was one!:ooh:

;)

Mmm. I walked into that one, didn't I?

Though at which level I'll leave you to decide...

Any comparison would have troubles with the basics:

a plank is dynamically stable, and it only crashes when the pilot makes it happen.

a chopper is dynamically unstable and the pilot is the only thing that stops it from crashing.

Big difference there.

Safety comparisons between FW and RW is a bit like comparing aircraft and automobiles. They are used for different things and operate in different regimes.

Indeed. I attended a Cathay Pacific CRM course where they spoke of "the safety window" (this was safety altitude) and how it was important to be very cautious of operating below it, to the extent of considering it an emergency situation.

I told them that I seldom got the opportunity to operate at or above safety altitude. Quite a few ears pricked up, especially as we provided their SAR cover in that part of the world.

Flying Binghi:
Good point, this brings home how difficult it is to compare the two.

I've witnessed close-up how Kiwi helicopter pilots use their machines for catching Red Deer, and the kinds of manoeuvres (and risks) they take are incomparable to fixed winged aircraft, (even crop spraying Fletchers!)

So whatever parameter was chosen to force a run-off, one could always dismiss it with the thought,

"Yes, but what is each machine accomplishing during its flight."

Interesting discussion though.

Someone (can't remember who) said "The Cub is a very safe aircraft, it can only just kill you."

Okay, since this thread has been switched to a more respectable location, let me add a twist.

I deliberately excluded Autogyros from my original post because, there's little doubt they most certainly are very dangerous aircraft.

Despite Commander Wallis' antics we all know what happens when you put the nose down sharply, what follows, and why.

So would all agree that AutoGyro safety would definitely come third in the list of three?

Quite possibly, but I don't think your diagnosis is correct doctor.

My suggestion is that the historical gyro accident rate is due to no certification standard for airworthiness and virtually no training.

In the UK and other parts new airworthiness design standards and better training have improved things somewhat.

Which is assisted by the fact that autogyros give you even more opportunities to kill yourself when not being extremely cautious and disciplined (sideslip, fast gyration/yaw, push-over, strong turbulence, often horrific H-V diagram, did I forget anything?), not to mention the fact that there are some quite unforgiving designs out there (High Thrust Line, no stab).

edit:
Regading the comparison FW - RW it has to be said that from a purely technical perspective FW have far less non- redundant critical parts that can lead to unrecoverable/unsurvivable situations when they fail. That can be mitigated to some extent by more rigourous maintenance though.

It's like that you want to compare ships vs. trains, all that statistics is bull*hit ...

If you decided to fly helicopters then you even don't think is it more or less safer than aeroplane.

I fly both (only PPL on aeroplane), and I feel more safe in helicopter, I don't know why ! Probably because I like choppers.



JR

Rather old but some interesting comparisons here.

So we are making progress, all seem to concur that Autogyros are death-traps, requiring extra-tight certification and pilot training/regulation.

Anybody here been brave enough to fly an Autogyro?

Yes, thanks; thoroughly enjoyable, and I personally rate an autogyro with it's engine switched off as safer that an R22 in a similar condition.

BTW, I've several 1000s of hours in the front of helicopters, many hours as pax in both FW and RW, and I'm not dead. How does that sway your computation?

Yes I fly autogyros: one of the PartT manufactured ones. It is a more affordable form of pleasure flying. I confine it to nice days. I usually fly by myself (sad) but it leaves me with greater margins and fuel in the tank. I am careful and keep well within the aircraft limits. Open cockpit is great, if you have not flown it before. I very rarely take it to the mountains (hills really) we have here, cos it is too light (which is a shame because I just love mountain flying).

I also flew R22s (about 2000 hrs). Really enjoyed that too. When i was in good instructing practice I really used to enjoy demoing and teaching EOLs etc, bearing in mind sensible limits. I was very careful to avoid serious turbulence. Had 1 eng failure: still here & so is the aircraft.

Moved onto bigger RW. Nice to get someone else to pay for that. Great privilege.

After more than a decade, found myself in an R22 a while ago. Horrible little thing; everything flaps and rattles [But it got me into the best job I ever had]

Also a PPL(A). About 300 hrs. Boring and pointless unless you need to get somewhere a fair distance away.

All IMHO.

The real question is the balance between risk and benefit/cost.

For most things you use a hele for you can't use a FW. I bet the FW accident rate for confined areas would be higher than for RW, but you know what, we will never find out.

I fly FW and RW and as much as I prefer to fly RW , which will always be my first love , there's no comparison. So much more can go wrong, so much quicker in RW. The nature of off airport landings, critical components and the nature of rotational stresses all add up to making RW machines an indulgence that is far more likely to to separate one's head from one's neck when things go pear shaped.

As for which is more fun, more challenging to fly ..RW wins hands down in my humble opinion

UK CAA publish a safety review every few years, where they look at various classes of aviation, and their preferred metric is fatalities per million flying hours, which is a fairly reasonable one.

The numbers vary from report to report, but are actually pretty consistent over the last 15 years or so and look something along the lines of:

Airlines - tiny numbers
Certified GA FW, large helicopters: approx 1 fatality per 80,000hrs
Smaller RW, microlights, gliders: 1 fatality per 40-50,000hrs
Homebuilts: 1 per 25,000hrs
Gyroplanes: 1 per 6,000hrs

Or thereabouts.

I agree that helicopters are a heck of a lot of fun, but I defy anybody to show me that a helicopter at £200++/hr gives me more than five times as much fun as I do in a flexwing microlight at £40/hr on the weekends.

G

My preferred metric would be 'fatalities per departure'. Whether crossing the road or going half-way around the world, on departure it's nice to have some idea of the chances of arriving in one piece.

As an aside, from the doccy puntosaurus linked:
Oh for that attitude this side of the Atlantic!

Genghis,

You quote UK CAA safety data that quantify fatalities as a function of flight hours...
Please define "tiny numbers". For example, if the fatality rate for large helicopters is 1 per 80,000 hours, is the airline fatality rate per 80,000 hours .1, .01, .001, .0001?

HT

diginagain:
We've not made any calculations yet, because we can't decide what to use as a measure, and doesn't look like we will be able to.

But the Law of Averages, and probability, have their beady eyes on you, so you may wish to consider retirement.

I'm working on it, believe me, but it is the Weather Gods who are preventing me from notching-up pax hours today.

Helinut:
This is the key isn't it? Knowing where they are, and double-watching yourself to ensure you keep within them.

I'm sure Cmmdr. Wallis holds tightly onto his designs because he knows punters definitely won't do that.

I won't dare you to try the legs over the side, and hands in the air trick.

Yes, that'd be a good factor in the measure, but so woolly.

Safety of fixed wing over cities compared to helicopters over cities: Single engine, yes helicopter must be safer.

Goody35:
Thanks for the honest appraisal.

Are those dare-devil Kiwis still out netting deer with helicopters, or have they finally caught them all?

Genghis:
Ahh numbers... We have proof at last!

No, seriously, I can readily see how they need to be broken down, and qualified before any conclusion can be drawn.

I'm surprised to see gliders lumped with microlights and Robinsons.
I feel very safe in gliders, especially with a parachute on.

But that's obviously skewed to favour fixed wings aircraft, which have far fewer "departures" than helicopters. Sorry that wouldn't do.

Seems that any machine certified for flight is inherently safe when all its parts are working properly.

Airplanes probably have the advantage in safety though for three reasons.

1. They are more stable, and usually have more automation reducing pilot workload and decreasing the chance of pilot error.

2. They land at the safest places - airports (typically). People don't buy helicopters to land at airports.

3. They spend far more time enroute than a helicopter. Accidents are far more likely to happen on a departure or arrival.

The advantage a helicopter has is that it can land nearly anywhere if there is a problem. For instance, if there were a fire on board I could likely be on the ground in minutes, where as an airplane must find an airport. Many accidents could've been avoided if a safe landing area could be found in time.