Initiatives within the helicopter community to reduce accidents appear to have yielded positive results. The United States Helicopter Safety Team (USHST), an organization made up of representatives from government agencies, industry groups, OEMs and flight schools, has published statistics that show a dramatic decrease in helicopter accident rates in the past 10 years.
The statistics show that there are less than half as many accidents involving helicopters today compared with baseline data averaged from 2001 through 2005, which was published by the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST), USHST’s parent organization. During the first seven months of 2014, there were 3.94 helicopter accidents for every 100,000 flight hours compared with the baseline number of 7.97.
