Other HEMS operators are also making strides. Air Methods, for example, will evaluate FOQA in a project with the Flight Safety Foundation and L-3. The oil-and-gas support operators have also stepped out smartly. Era Helicopters has a FOQA program and PHI has a non-FAA, internal FDM program. Other suppliers include L-3, which has introduced two different light aircraft recorders; Honeywell, Appareo, which has a line of self-contained recorders for small operators and legacy aircraft; Wi-Flight, which has a smart phone-based product; and Sagem Avionics.ACH experienceArkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) has had more than a year of experience as a FOQA-approved operator, using the Appareo GAU 2000. Raysor cites measurable benefits, such as the management of a noise complaint from a resident in ACH's operating area. The resident had even gone to the FAA about it. But ACH was able to do a noise complaint study based on FOQA data. "We realized how many times a month we were flying [near] this guy’' location,” he recalls. "We were able to measure the altitude, the time of day and [the frequency]."The data also told ACH that "99 percent" of the infractions were when pilots were relocating aircraft from the hospital heliport to the airport without a patient, the operator's most flexible time. As a result of the study, ACH was able to restructure its routing to the airport and reduce noise infractions "by about 95 percent," Raysor says.Big pictureWhile the FAA talks about possibly requiring LARS and FDM, ongoing international initiatives by two interrelated groups are trying to move helicopter operators, manufacturers, and suppliers toward a consensus on FDM parameters and practices that could guide the evolution of regulation in this area. First was the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST), which was launched in 2005 with the goal of reducing the helicopter accident rate by 80 percent by 2016, recalls Rhett Flater, executive director of the American Helicopter Society, who, with FAA and the Helicopter Association International (HAI), helped to spearhead the movement. Statistics show there has really been some improvement. The U.S. fleet accident rate has declined from an estimated 9.1 per 100,000 hours in 2005 to 4.9/100,000 hours through October 2010, according to FAA, bettering, so far, the 2010 target of 5.8. Internationally, the accident rate has also declined -- from 9.4/100,000 hours in 2005 to 6-6.1 through October of 2010, according to Fred Brisbois of Sikorsky, who co-chairs the U.S. side of the IHST's Joint Helicopter Safety Implementation Team.Brisbois points out that the No. 1 recommendation of IHST's analysis team in its 2006 report was for the development and installation of aircraft FDM equipment. Alluding to FDM/FOQA's widespread and successful use in the airlines, he called FDM "probably the most significant cultural change," he's seen in his 40 years in the aviation business. The implementation team has taken all the recommendations from the analysis team and "tried to pin them down into actions that are executable," he says. The IHST's HFDM group -- led by Kipp Lau of FDM analysis services provider, CAPACG -- has been developing a list of parameters for helicopter recorders. An operator, for example, could record parameters such as a certain degree of roll left/right for a certain duration in order to identify an excessive bank angle event. The IHST FDM group is also developing a common set of events that new operators can build on, Lau says. Because of the multiplicity of helicopter missions, he’s added another column, so to speak, indicating which types of operations each event would be appropriate for.Just last year saw the launch of a second group, known as the Global HFDM Community. The global HFDM group, which includes the larger operators, is also developing lists of light recorder "standards" in the form of parameters for categories of aircraft, such as light single piston, light single turbine, medium twin turbine, and heavy twin, explains Capt. Mike Pilgrim of CHC, who co-chairs the global HFDM organization's steering group. The group also focuses on data sharing among operators.Pilgrim distinguishes the global group's approach from the regulatory approach. The FAA is "looking for minimum standards for flight recorders to assist in accident investigations, and we are looking at recommending minimum standards for HFDM." The difference, he says, is that "for an effective HFDM program we would require a much larger data set than any legislator would ... mandate for accident investigation." In his view "it is pointless recommending a small minimum number of 'mandatory' parameters, but this is what regulators have consistently done with ... FDR systems." Editor's Note: This is the first part of a two-part series on recording and flight data monitoring requirements and options for helicopters. The second part will describe in greater detail some of the products currently available to this sector.
