In running HeliHub.com, we have a number of set policies on how we run the site.
News reporting
- What’s reportable? – Anything and everything to do with the helicopter industry – any country, any helicopter type
- What’s not reportable? – Our target market is the helicopter industry, so it does not make sense for us to run stories about helicopters doing everyday sorts of things that we all expect helicopters to do. So you won’t get reports of an air ambulance landing on the highway to pick up a patient from a traffic accident, and nor will you get notification of coast guard doing a particular rescue – unless there are particular newsworthy aspects of it from an industry viewpoint. Also, we do not cover gyrocopters.
- Editor’s decision is final – Sometimes we will make an editorial decision not to publish something, without giving a reason. Sorry, that’s just how it is sometimes!
- We engage our brains! – Many suppliers work in both the helicopter and fixed-wing parts of our industry, and produce press releases covering both. Yet time and time again we see our competitors blithely running press releases from such suppliers with out checking that the content is relevant to helicopter operations. CAE and FlightSafety are two typical suppliers in this category. On HeliHub.com you should not find any stories from suppliers like these on, say, Boeing 737 training or appointments to run XYZ centre which does not even have a helicopter simulator. We also think about our audience – who really don’t need to read an article such as “Mid-Air incident could have been deadly” – we know that, and we just present the salient facts of the accident in our Safety pages. In short, we put some brains behind our news service.
Accident reporting
- What’s reportable? If an accident or incident is reported on the internet, then we will file it on HeliHub.com. Our approach is that if the pilot of the helicopter landed at a location different to where they intended to land at the time they took off, then its reportable. At present we do not report incidents where the helicopter (and/or pilots) are targetted by laser light from the ground, simply because there are too many. This is under continual review as these incidents are becoming more serious (eg. pilots being taken off line for days at a time to recover after hospital visits). On a different tack, there are some countries where navigational/etc incidents such as runway incursions are reported on the internet and HeliHub.com does not include these either.
- Level of detail – HeliHub.com is not in the business of accident investigation, and neither do we have any intention to analyse or speculate on the causes behind particular incidents. Our very brief summaries of accidents are based on media reports and from official investigation authorities like the NTSB. Reports in the general media are rarely written by people with a full technical knowledge of the situation (let alone the prima face facts of the case!) and often the accuracy is not their strong point. It is for these reasons that we do not include things like the type of operation (eg. EMS, Loadlifting etc) and other details in our accident reporting. We present the bare facts only. However, note that our use of Tags (see above) enables the reader to do further analysis with ease. We also include links to investigation reports from professional investigators.
- Speed or detail? When filing accident reports, we often file initial details before every aspect is available, because we feel it’s better to get some initial information out there to alert HeliHub.com users to the situation, rather than wait. It is always worth checking back on a report later to get more information – for example we may not have the registration or MSN of the particular aircraft involved, and that information comes to light later.
