Articles for category Helicopter Sectors
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Jan
17
2017
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Posted by Admin
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It’s Sunrise, but the sun is not seen; it only feels like the day is starting. The jungle, humidity, and mosquitos do their work, and walking is almost impossible. The clouds and the bad weather are all around, while the rain hampers visibility. Gunfire is heard in heavy fighting between the Army and the guerrillas they battle. The result is wounded soldiers. Next, helicopters are heard. It seems like we are revisiting the Vietnam War, but instead we are in the Western Hemisphere, covering armed conflict in Colombia.
The combat search and rescue (C-SAR) team of the Ejército Nacional de Colombia (Colombian National Army) is called into the war zone to airlift soldiers that have been wounded while confronting insurgent groups. Flying this particular mission is an UH-60 Black Hawk escorted by a Huey II. The soldiers on the ground say that those flying to the rescue are “God’s crew on Earth.”
The Huey II takes a “hunter position” to provide cover for the UH-60 as it descends into the extraction zone. As the UH-60 lowers, enemy fire commences and its pilot-in-command is injured. The helicopter’s rescue mission now turns into an emergency mission to save its own pilot’s life.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Human Interest
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Jan
02
2017
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Posted by Admin
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Over the last 10 years, the vehicles on Southern California’s roads have multiplied like rabbits. Unsurprisingly, there’s been increasing demand for helicopter charter services to fly over the traffic jams. Helinet Aviation, in business since 1987, answers this need by providing unparalleled helicopter services for multiple markets. Their VIP charter division has seen a significant increase in clientele over the past few years as they have become the top choice for clients who fly above it all. “Anyone who lives in Southern California understands the freeway system is a gridlock nightmare,” says Brady Bowers, manager of Helinet Aviation’s charter division. “Corporate executives do not have time to waste sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. That travel agony has really encouraged an increase in clientele for VIP charter."
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Categories:
Company Profiles
Helicopter Sectors
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Nov
14
2016
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Posted by Admin
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In a bid to improve operational safety, helicopter air ambulance (HAA) operators Air Evac Lifeteam and Air Methods are incorporating two-axis autopilots into their light single-turbine helicopters. Air Evac Lifeteam is updating the Bell 206 Long Rangers and Bell 407 helicopters in their 150-plus helicopter fleet with Genesys Aerosystem (formerly Cobham) HeliSAS Autopilot and Stability Augmentation System (and Garmin 500H glass cockpits) by the end of 2017. Air Methods is focussing on including autopilots whenever it purchases new helicopters for its 400-plus fleet, including the 200 Bell 407GXPs it is purchasing between now and 2024. The Bell 407GXP comes with a Garmin G1000H glass panel avionics system integrated to a Bell-designed autopilot system for a cutting-edge combination that can also be retrofitted into the Bell 407GX.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Safety
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Oct
24
2016
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Posted by Admin
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For the second year in a row, we took our OEM users survey to the streets where hundreds of helicopter owners, operators, pilots, mechanics, and crew members lended us their perspective about the aircraft they operate. The over-arching goal of our OEM aircraft user survey was to accomplish three things:
Create a survey that is NOT a competition with pronounced winners and losers, but present the data.
Covers a much broader range of criteria than single-issue topics like “customer support,” or topics only targeted towards purchasers of aircraft.
Covers criteria that are not only important to owner/operators, but also important to those who actually work in the day-to-day operations of helicopters: pilots, mechanics, and managers.
The 35 question operator / user survey evaluated the overall experience they have with the OEM aircraft and services utilized in the course of doing business.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Oct
10
2016
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Posted by Admin
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I’d been awake for 17 hours when the phone rang at 12:45 a.m. The communications specialist said, “There’s a scene call on Palomar Mountain. Will you be able to take the flight?”
“Well, I’ve only had one shot of Tequila, but let me check the weather and I’ll get right back to you.”
Sound implausible? The shocking truth is that it’s not—not when you consider a study published in the British Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, where researchers in Australia and New Zealand determined that from 16 percent up to 60 percent of road accidents involve sleep deprivation. This reflects some of the same hazardous effects as being drunk. Although I had never actually had a drink that night, my cognitive thinking, my body, and reflexes were as adversely affected as if I had.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Safety
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Sep
20
2016
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Posted by Admin
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“One of my great ambitions before I die is to fly in an aircraft that is on an airline's balance sheet.”
– Sir David Tweedie at the Empire Club of Canada, 25 April 2008
With that statement, Sir David Tweedie changed the world. For nearly a decade, the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) labored to create a new set of accounting standards governing leases. In the first quarter of this year, FASB finally released Topic 842 on leases, and IASB released IFRS 16 on leases. Let’s not rewrite the hundreds of pages that have already been written about the new standards, but do note that you can find some of the best at www.elfaonline.org/Issues/Accounting/. (Look especially for articles by Bill Bosco, who has very clear explanations.) The major takeaway is that now leases have to appear on corporate balance sheets.
So why is this important to helicopters? While it's a truism that the oil industry drives the helicopter industry, it’s seldom mentioned—but just as true—that the availability of capital equally drives the helicopter industry.
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Categories:
Regulatory
Helicopter Sectors
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Sep
12
2016
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Posted by Admin
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Texas-based Night Flight Concepts (NFC) has impressive numbers. It has an instructor staff with 39,109 flight hours that has trained 1,443 students. It has inspected and repaired 3,391 night vision goggles, and has 300 customers worldwide. Yet, there’s also another thing at which the company excels: It creates clever acronyms to trademark its brands.
Take SOAR, for example. Sure, it’s a common aviation word, even biblical: “They will soar on wings like eagles” comes to mind. (Looks like Isaiah was in the fixed-wing camp.) However, S.O.A.R.TM is also NFC’s service that provides comprehensive airborne resources for any mission: Special Operations Aviator Resources. That’s creative naming. Don’t agree? Well, Madison Avenue types get paid big bucks to brand everything from video to bottled water, and they still deliver failures like Sony Betamax and Coor’s Rocky Mountain Spring Water. (It’s true that some beerheads compare Coor’s beer to water, but that’s just harsh!)
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Categories:
Company Profiles
Helicopter Sectors
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Aug
29
2016
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Posted by Admin
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The fire started small on May Day 2016. However, the traditional May 1 holiday soon turned—and burned—into a distress call. Unfortunately, the winds were too high and the ground too dry. Within hours, more and more acres were devoured by flames with red-hot embers blowing ahead of the leading edge. In time, the fast moving fire grew too hot for firefighters to approach. So intense was its temperature that it even began creating its own heat lightning. Eventually, emergency personnel had another name for the Fort McMurray wildfire: The Beast.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Human Interest
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Aug
15
2016
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Posted by Admin
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I have just finished a day's contract flying and am now driving back home on a four-hour trip. I’m a little fatigued, but mostly just bored. I need new energy in the car. Fortunately, I have a phone interview scheduled to begin now with Don Wharton, REACH Air Medical Service’s director of business development. With both cruise control and phone speaker on, I start my phone's voice recorder and make the call. Wharton answers and his enthusiasm immediately comes flooding into my car—goodbye boredom!
I ask him, "In your own words, what's the Reach mission?" Without hesitation, Wharton replies, "Right across the ranks, it's our obsessive focus on safe and efficient transportation of our patients and always doing right by them in every situation. Depending on the situation, sometimes we substitute the word 'patient' with community, partner, or customer, but we are committed to the high-road process that produces the best result."
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Categories:
Company Profiles
Helicopter Sectors
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Jul
04
2016
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Posted by Admin
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Congratulations! You’ve graduated from owning a 30 year old, second-hand, twin-engine helicopter to a spanking new Airbus Helicopters H175, AgustaWestland AW189, Sikorsky S-76D, or some other next-generation rotorcraft equipped with the latest systems. Now that you own this machine, where are you going to have it serviced? Is the MRO that kept your aging helicopter flying able to do the same for your shiny new helicopter? If not, how can you find service before it’s too late?
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors