Since 1943, the American Helicopter Society (renamed AHS International in 1997) has served as the world’s oldest and largest professional society for vertical flight, representing the designers, engineers and manufacturers of rotorcraft. In addition to serving as a conduit of information and technology amongst the industry, the group’s activities extend to lobbying, education and public outreach.
At a session here at Heli-Expo, AHS executive director Michael Hirschberg updated the audience on the group’s latest activities. Over the past year AHS’s lobbying efforts have been successful in the restoration of millions of dollars of vertical lift research funding to the budgets of the U.S. Army and NASA after they were initially slashed.
In response to a spate of helicopter crashes in the early 2000s, the group founded the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST) with the stated goal of reducing rotorcraft accidents by 80 percent by 2016. While it has achieved a current reduction of 30 to 40 percent, Hirschberg admits that that goal will not be met with only one year left, but the group remains undaunted. “We’re going to keep driving and trying to reach the ultimate goal of zero accidents because there’s really no percentage of accidents that’s acceptable,” he said.
Toward that end, the group is involved with several initiatives, which it believes will help improve rotorcraft operations. In concert with HAI, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association and the Aircraft Electronics Association, AHS is supporting the development of an alternate means of compliance for IFR certification of single-engine helicopters without changes to rulemaking. “We think this is going to really help in safety and basically to allow lower-cost helicopters to be better operated and have more capability,” noted Hirschberg.
Regarding the “Helicopter Air Ambulance” rule regarding radar altimeter equipage for all Part 135 helicopters by 2017, the organization believes that urging the FAA to accept HTAWS as an alternate means of compliance would be a much more capable and safer way to reduce controlled flight into terrain accidents in general.
While all aircraft are mandated to be equipped with ADS-B by 2020, AHS in coordination with HAI is urging operators to adopt the technology as soon as possible to start taking advantage of the benefits the system offers, and AHS is also advocating the development of standards for lightweight, low-cost flight data monitoring systems, in response to recent developments in such systems by manufacturers.
Lastly the group is encouraging all operators to adopt “fly neighborly” protocols in an effort to reduce helicopter noise complaints and broaden market appeal. The group is sponsoring a conference in Montreal this September on industry sustainability initiatives including noise reduction.
