26-Sep-2017 Source: HeliOffshore
There can be no gambling when it comes to safety, but HeliOffshore’s highly collaborative approach to enhancing the safety of offshore helicopter operations has directly benefitted from a poker tournament held earlier this year. At their fourth annual no-stakes poker tournament, Milestone Aviation funded a prize pool of $50,000 in sponsorship funds to HeliOffshore. The global helicopter leasing group is an active member of HeliOffshore.
Each of the tournament’s five finalists won the right to allocate a portion of the sponsorship funds to one of HeliOffshore’s safety projects.
· The tournament’s winner, Heli Union’s Patrick Molis, directed $20,000 to human factors in maintenance research.
· Runner up Alisar Tuncer of Skyline Technic, assigned $10,000 to complete a pilot eye-tracking study.
· Third place finalist, Bristow Group’s Tim Rolfe, allocated $8,000 to improve flight path management.
· Fourth place finalist, Dean Antink of Maersk Oil, provided $7,000 to advance helicopter terrain warning systems.
· Fifth place finalist, Hank Williams of Cougar Helicopters, elected to further sponsor ($5,000) human factors in maintenance research.
The lively poker game and menu of safety projects inspired even greater generosity when two other HeliOffshore members in attendance stepped up to donate an additional $20,000 in funding, taking the total raised from this very enjoyable event to $70,000.
Since the event, the following progress has been made on the projects sponsored by the poker finalists:
· Human Factors in Maintenance – World leading experts in this area have produced a state of the art method for addressing human factors issues in the design process, which is being applied retrospectively to in-service fleets. In addition, helicopter operators have shared data on the areas where better support for maintainers could enhance safety.
· Eye-Tracking Research –In phase two of HeliOffshore’s research to better understand the ‘monitoring function’ required of air crew in either ‘Pilot Flying’ or ‘Pilot Monitoring’ roles, researchers from Jarvis Bagshaw will compare output from an anonymous survey of pilots with eye-tracker data collected in a simulator during trials conducted in June. The survey takes no more than five minutes to complete.
· Helicopter Terrain Avoidance Warning Systems – A letter of support from the International Oil and Gas Producers has been signed, a new specification has been produced by the UK CAA, and phase two work on presentation of alerts is underway.
· Flight Path Management – HeliOffshore members have collaborated to produce an approach path management guide, sharing best practice for this important phase of flight. You can find this guidance on HeliOffshore’s website.
HeliOffshore Chief Executive Officer, Gretchen Haskins, reflected on the progress made stating, “Milestone Aviation’s generosity, our members’ commitment to the safety, and the collaborative efforts of experts across the world, are clear evidence that improving the safety of people travelling to work offshore every day is an investment worth making.”
Milestone President & CEO, Daniel Rosenthal, added “We were excited to bring HeliOffshore’s mission of safety and industry collaboration to our annual customer event and are even more excited to see the progress made against critical safety projects selected by tournament finalists.”