ISTOCK/BENDC
INTHESPOTLIGHT By Jen Boyer
Robert Feerst, President,
Utilities / Aviation Specialists Wire-strike avoidance expert sees much to like in today’s helicopter safety culture.
the helicopter industry for courses about safe flying around wires and obstructions. A former lineman and utility helicopter pilot, Feerst developed his first course for flying around wires for the utility sector in the 1980s and later expanded it to cover the full helicopter industry. His courses and refreshers have been credited with saving countless lives over the years. ROTOR sat down with Feerst to learn more about how he became involved in wire-strike avoidance, the changes he’s seen in the industry’s safety record during the past 40 years, and how he’s contrib- uted to helicopter safety through not only training but auditing, consulting, and more.
R
OBERT “BOB” FEERST and his company, Utilities / Aviation Specialists, are synonymous in
ROTOR: You started courses in flying-in-the-wire environment at the request of former HAI President Frank Jensen. How did that happen? Feerst: I’ve been a member of HAI since 1982 and was the manager of the flight department for a fairly large power com- pany in the Midwest at the time. We oper- ated nine helicopters and three airplanes because we patrolled not only for our power company, but also for four other power companies in the area. What got me started in supporting other companies’ safety was when another utility company just to the south of ours had a fatal accident. They came to me to ask if I could investigate and tell them what went wrong and how they could do better. One of the things I came away with
from that experience was the thought of starting a consulting firm to help power companies increase their safety. I realized there wasn’t any meaningful training in fly- ing for a power company. All we knew was what we had learned in the military, which was basically “watch out for power lines.” I developed a training course on how to fly in the wire-and-obstruction environment that covered numerous factors, such as vis- ibility science, reading line hardware, and understanding how lighting, shadows, and background changes affect wire visibility. I knew what it was like to be looking at a wire one moment, look away for just a sec- ond, then look back and find the wire had completely “disappeared.”
I put the training course together in the mid to late ’80s to train the employees in the power companies I worked with. At about the same time, I became one of the founders of HAI’s Utility, Patrol, and Construction Committee [now the Utilities, Patrol, and Construction Working Group]. Fast forward about a year and a half. The air ambulance business was really booming, and at that time, about half of air ambu- lance accidents were caused by wire strikes of some sort. The FAA went to Frank Jensen and said HAI should do something about the wire- strike problem or the agency would do something itself. Frank came to me and asked how we could get meaningful train- ing in wire strikes that would stop these accidents.
I shared my training course with Frank
and offered to broaden it to address opera- tions outside the utility sector. Wire strikes were prevalent across the whole
20 ROTOR SEPTEMBER 2022
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