30-Jan-2011 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 December 2010
Useful Links
* Civil Accidents
* Military Accidents
* Fatal Accidents – both civil and military
* 2009 Annual Review of Fatal Accidents
* Safety News
December 2010 was another good month for helicopter accidents, likely due to flying hours being generally lower in northern hemisphere winter, and we recorded 38 accidents. Of these, 9 were fatal (7 civil, 2 military) involving 23 people deceased (16 from civilian accidents, 7 military) – compare these figures to the average in 2009 was 12 fatal accidents and 39 fatalities per month. In the last couple of months we have particularly noticed weather issues – with the significant majority of the world’s helicopter fleet in the Northern Hemisphere, December/January time is “depth of winter” and thus lower light levels and less kind weather
Our reports this month investigated a total of 38 incidents from the following countries
* Australia
* Brazil
* Canada
* France
* Germany
* Hong Kong
* India
* Malaysia
* Mexico
* Poland
* Russia
* South Africa
* Ukraine
* 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.