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Nov
18
2024
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Posted 2 days ago ago by Admin
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By VAST Safety Rating Concept Working Group
Questions: How to incentivize installation of systems and equipment having safety benefits in the current fleet? How to create a positive dynamic to enhance safety? Are there successful initiatives in other industries that could inspire the rotorcraft community?
The concept of investigating a rating system for helicopters has been a point of discussion for years. In the mid-2010s, three entities articulated interest in the research and potential development of a rating system. The 2018 European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Rotorcraft Safety Roadmap published several streams with a 2028 target of a 50% reduction in accidents. Rating the safety of mostly light/CS-27 helicopters, was among those streams. In early 2019 the International Oil and Gas Producers- Aviation Subcommittee (IOGP-ASC) and HeliOffshore coordinated the proposition for a rating system for medium/heavy helicopters. In December 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) produced a white paper, “FAA Rotorcraft Safety Rating Concept for Design and Equipment,” that also outlined the possible development and use of a rating system as a possible way to help reduce rotorcraft accidents.
The establishment of the Vertical Aviation Safety Team (VAST) in 2021 facilitated the opportunity to create a dedicated working group to study a proof of concept for a helicopter safety rating scheme. This two-year effort required monthly meetings with periodic face-to-face meetings of a group of diverse members representing regulators, operators, OEMs, a bow-tie specialist, and industry groups, all with differing agendas–and all volunteers.
The working group looked to existing rating schemes to help inform a potential path for such a scheme in an industry that is extremely diverse, complex and has the ability to change missions, literally on-the-fly. There are many challenges to applying a rating scheme concept to our industry, but the working group was able to put boundaries around what could be included and developed a system of how to rate items related to the survivability and avoidance of an event. To make the scheme useful, it was decided that the helicopter had to be evaluated as equipped in the operational environment it was working. (It makes sense that floats would enhance a rating for operations over or in the vicinity of large bodies of water, but it doesn’t make much sense to add or take away from a helicopter’s rating based on those same floats in a desert environment.) Besides equipage, the group was also challenged with a system where helicopters certified under Part 27 and Part 29 have substantial differences, low turnover rate of the existing global fleet, cost of crash testing (which the group decided was not a necessity) potential bias towards newer aircraft, and simply getting everyone to agree on what and how to rate items. However, in a world where automobiles are able to have new and novel, safety enhancing equipment released or improved almost every year it seemed like there should be a way to drive some of that technology into the aviation world. The benefits of trying and succeeding in finding a way to help drive this could be a game-changer, if done thoughtfully and properly.
A soon-to-be-released white paper will present their work on this proof of concept to the industry. The group recognizes that it is a concept and that follow-on work will be required before the scheme can be proposed for implementation. Presentations by the working group were provided at Heli-Expo 2024 and will be offered at the EASA European Rotorcraft and VTOL Safety Symposium 2024 and at Verticon 2025.
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