FAA to set new safety rules for medical helicopters

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is planning to formulate new rules that would require medical helicopters to use additional safety gadgets and procedures, including systems that help avoid collision. This move by the FAA stems from a series of fatal crashes in the United States involving medical helicopters over the last two years, in which 35 people lost their lives.

The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent federal agency, authorised by US Congress to investigate civil aviation accidents in the US, have criticised the FAA for not improving the safety of medical helicopters.

The FAA, an agency of the United States Department of Transportation, is bestowed with the authority to regulate and supervise all aspects of civil aviation in the United States.

So far, the FAA has maintained that “helicopter operators could make safety changes more quickly if they acted voluntarily.”

The US media quoted John Allen, the FAA’s director of flight standards, at a Congressional hearing as saying that the FAA, even while recognizing the aviation industry’s voluntary actions, would soon formulate rules to mandate the use of safety equipment and procedures.

John Allen told the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, “We recognise that relying on voluntarily compliance alone is not enough to ensure safe flight operations.”

The FAA would start the procedure for making new rules for medical helicopters in late 2009 or in early 2010, John Allen said at the Congressional hearing, adding that the rules would first have to go through a “public comment period” and so they might not take effect till 2011.

The FAA’s proposals would include a requirement that all medical helicopters must be equipped with “terrain awareness and avoidance systems” which warn of terrestrial obstacles nearby.

At present, only about 40% of medical helicopters in the United States use the terrain awareness and avoidance systems, according to the FAA. These systems cost up to $100,000 for each helicopter.

The website nytimes.com quoted Dawn Mancuso, chief of the Association of Air Medical Services, a trade group based in Alexandria, Virginia, the United States, as saying that some operators of medical helicopters might not be able to afford the terrain awareness and avoidance systems.

According to official data, over 800 medical helicopters are at present operating in the United States – their work involving airlifting the sick and injured, often in emergency conditions.

In the last decade, records show, the medical-helicopter industry has doubled in size.

Experts on aviation safety allege that many of these medical helicopters are run by companies that seek only profits and that competition among the companies for flights has aggravate the risks.