Helicopters

When the Boeing forecast released last month gave a hint of the number of pilots and mechanics needed in the next two decades, it included some bare-bones figures, 43,000, for the helicopter industry worldwide. Within the U.S., however, the number of active helicopter pilots sits at about 15,000 according to Robbie Paul, assistant chief flight […]

The U.S. helicopter community has seen a miserable couple of weeks for flight safety with the worst surge of fatal accidents in the past six years. Between June 29 and July 8, four fatal accidents occurred in regions of the mainland and Puerto Rico. Additionally, an air ambulance in Chicago crashed on July 8 while […]

During initial interviews with NTSB officials, the pilot of the Airbus AS350B2 that crashed into New York’s East River on March 11 was unable to recall how many photographic flights he had conducted on the day of the accident. He could only remember that his duty day began about 11 a.m. local time and that […]

The FAA is moving to temporarily grounding doors-off helicopter tour flights in which passengers are tethered to the aircraft, after the March 11 crash in New York City of a Liberty Helicopters Airbus AS350 that killed five people. “The FAA will order operators and pilots to take immediate actions to control or mitigate this risk,” […]

You may recall the innovative design of the Marenco Swisshelicopter SKYe SH09 – the light helicopter with the double doors at the tail section and large sliding door entry for the glass cockpit – and wonder what is happening with the Swiss project. The answer is, a whole lot. The company announced last week it […]

Members of the International Helicopter Safety Team said Wednesday at the Heli-Expo show in Dallas that they’re encouraged by a trend that shows the total number of accidents has declined in the 50 countries around the globe the IHST surveyed. In the United States, for instance, total accidents in 2016 declined to 106 from 121 […]

Not long ago, fleet operators like PHI worked hard just to keep track of their helicopters and aircraft. After Tuesday’s announcement by Sikorsky of its partnership with PHI and Metro Aviation to begin sharing real-time data on the health of PHI’s aircraft anywhere in the world, the game has changed. The triad team of companies […]

Bell Helicopter president Mitch Snyder today called the new FCX-001 concept a “vision of the future” when he pulled back the curtains to show off the mockup at Heli-Expo in Dallas. The sleek new helicopter, reminiscent of an X-plane, features a single pilot seat in the center of the cockpit confirming this next-generation machine will […]

The atmosphere in our normally gray conference room was, well, colorful, and the manager was wishing he hadn’t OK’d my idea for an informal meeting with local traffic helicopter and fixed-wing pilots after a recent and highly publicized accident. On that frigid, foggy morning, a pilot and a female ­reporter lifted off in a Bell […]

Helicopter safety statistics released this week by the FAA indicate that years’ worth of hard work by the agency and a number of industry groups to improve operational safety are paying off. The agency reported that the raw accident rate, as well as the fatal accident rate in helicopters, recorded a downturn for the third […]