Attached is the Rotorcraft Monthly Accident Briefing for February 2022 (5th month of FY22).
We are in the process of moving from the traditional powerpoint summary to a pdf of a new rotorcraft accident dashboard. In the short term, I will continue to provide both documents as attachments. Over time, we plan to transition away from the legacy powerpoint slides and will only include the pdf of the dashboard.
Monthly Summary
Totals: 10 accidents, 3 fatal accidents, 6 fatalities
- Accidents during the month were distributed among at least 7 different industry sectors, with Personal/Private the only one with more than 1 accident.
- The 3 fatal accidents during the month involved 1 each from the following industry sectors: Aerial Application, Law Enforcement, and External Load.
Cumulative FY22 Summary, Oct-Feb
FY22, Totals: 42 accidents, 11 fatal accidents, 19 fatalities
Accidents:
- The Oct-Feb, estimated accident rate was 3.73per 100K hours.
- For the same time period of Oct- Feb, the accident rate was up 16% compared to FY21 and up 6% compared to the 5 year average.
- Personal/Private led all industry sectors in accounting for 21% of the accidents, followed closely by Instructional/Training with 19%.
Fatal Accidents:
- The Oct-Feb estimated fatal accident rate was 0.98 per 100K hours.
- For the same time period of Oct- Feb, the fatal accident rate was up 255% compared to FY21 and up 31% compared to the 5 year average.
- The 8 total fatal accidents that occurred in the 3 months of Dec, Jan, and Feb tied for the highest 3 month total for those months in the past 20 years.
- For the first time since FY13, each month from Oct-Feb had at least 1 fatal accident.
- The fatal accidents for Oct-Feb were spread across 7 different industry sectors. Personal/Private was the only sector from Oct-Feb with more than 1 fatal accident.
- The percentage of accidents with a fatality (26% Oct-Feb) is trending as the highest in the past 20 years if it continues through the end of the FY.
Fatalities:
- The FY22 estimated fatality rate through February was 1.69 per 100K hours.
U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) Calendar Year Metrics
- Goal: Reduce the 5 year average fatal accident rate to 0.55 per 100K hours by 2025. The USHST uses the 5 year average fatal accident rate from CYs 2014-2018 (0.62 per 100K hours) as their baseline for measurement.
- The CY 2018-2022 5 year average fatal accident rate was 0.8 per 100K hours through February 2022.
Lee Roskop
Fleet Safety Section, AIR-723
Operational Safety Branch, Compliance & Airworthiness Division
817-222-5337
lee.roskop@faa.gov
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