27-Oct-2010 Source: HeliHub.com
HeliHub.com maintains what we believe to be the most comprehensive record of helicopter accidents and incidents on the internet. Here is our report for September 2010
Useful Links
* Civil Accidents
* Military Accidents
* Fatal Accidents – both civil and military
* 2009 Annual Review of Fatal Accidents
* Safety News
September 2010 was another poor month for helicopter accidents, and we recorded 60 accidents. Of these, 10 were fatal (7 civil, 3 military) involving 25 people deceased (11 Civil from civilian accidents, 14 military) – compare these figures to the average in 2009 was 12 fatal accidents and 39 fatalities per month. In recent months we have noticed three particular trends
* Accidents caused by contact with wires
* Bell 206 (and OH-58) in agricultural operations in the US
* a continued trend with US air ambulance operations
Our reports this month investigated a total of 60 incidents from the following countries
* Afghanistan
* Australia
* Austria
* Brazil
* China
* Colombia
* Germany
* France
* Greenland
* Honduras
* India
* Japan
* Malaysia
* New Zealand
* Philippines
* Russia
* Singapore
* South Africa
* Switzerland
* Thailand
* UK
* Ukraine
* USA
* Venezuela
HeliHub.com aims to record every helicopter accident and incident that happens. Our approach is that anything in the following categories is valid to be listed on our site – we look for reports of
* damage of a helicopter
* damage of property caused by the operation of a helicopter
* injury to persons caused by the operation of a helicopter
* precautionary or emergency landings, ie where the pilot considers safety would be compromised by further flight
* situations which lead to take-offs being abandoned
There are one or two “grey areas” where we do not file accident reports on our site, and a good example are those news stories where law enforcement agencies have had their helicopter targeted by a laser pen during night operations, but this has not led to the pilot in command declaring an emergency and electing to land as soon as possible. Further, there are a number of safety-related issues found on the ground during maintenance or pre-flight inspection which do not lead to publicly-accessible reports being filed on the internet.