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 March 2011

Useful Links

* Civil Accidents
* Military Accidents
* Fatal Accidents – both civil and military
* Safety News

March 2011 was a very poor month for the number of helicopter accidents, with no fewer than 75 accidents recorded. Fortunately, only 8 of these were fatal (3 civil, 5 military) involving 20 people deceased (11 from civilian accidents, 9 military) – compare these figures to the averages for

• 2010 – 11 fatal accidents and 33 fatalities per month
• 2009 – 12 fatal accidents and 39 fatalities per month

Our reports this month investigated a total of 75 incidents from the following countries

* Afghanistan
* Brazil
* Chile
* Ethiopia
* France
* India
* Italy
* Kenya
* Korea
* Libya
* Malaysia
* New Zealand
* Pakistan
* Philippines
* Spain
* Sudan
* Switzerland
* Turkey
* 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.