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 October 2010

Useful Links

* Civil Accidents
* Military Accidents
* Fatal Accidents – both civil and military
* 2009 Annual Review of Fatal Accidents
* Safety News

October 2010 was another poor month for helicopter accidents, and we recorded 50 accidents. Of these, 9 were fatal (7 civil, 2 military) involving 47 people deceased (21 from civilian accidents, 26 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

* Increase in R22 and R44 accidents in Southern Hemisphere – perhaps as flying hours increase as we come into summer there
* Accidents from low level in US – agricultural, lifting, line patrol operations and the like

Our reports this month investigated a total of 50 incidents from the following countries

* Afghanistan
* Antarctica
* Australia
* France
* Germany
* Iceland
* India
* Israel
* Japan
* Mexico
* Nepal
* New Zealand
* Pakistan
* Paraguay
* Romania
* Russia
* Somalia
* Sweden
* Tajikstan
* UK
* USA

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.