HELIOFFSHORE PHOTOS
HASKINS: The FAA, with its CAST [Commercial Aviation Safety Team] program, set a goal years ago of reducing fatalities among US airlines by 80%, and they achieved that goal. They did it through collaboration, data sharing, and really getting the whole supply chain—from little parts suppliers to big component manufacturers to the aircraft makers, plus the FAA and other national and regional regulators— involved in sharing all their data. For the first time, we could do a good analysis of a data set large enough to detect trends that might not be noticeable by, or understandable to, one operator analyzing just their own data.
ROTOR: What’s an example of that work- ing for offshore helicopter operators now?
HASKINS: One of the biggest causes of fatalities in helicopters is CFIT, controlled flight into terrain—which in our case can mean water just as easily as it can mean land—or into structures on an offshore drill- ing platform, towers, or what have you. Before our efforts, individual operators
really didn’t know anything about what other operators were experiencing and whether they were experiencing similar issues. Previously, we had some training on that, but it really wasn’t tailored well for helicopter flight. We knew we wanted to be able to detect and avoid obstacles better than we had been. Several organizations collabo- rated on how we might do something spe- cifically tailored to help offshore helicopter flight in that regard. We looked at a lot of data from lots of operators to determine what the common issues are, and then we worked with the manufacturers. And now the result is that, in early 2020, the first upgraded
terrain-avoidance systems for offshore heli- copter operations will begin operation on an AW139 helicopter. Other manufacturers and models will be adding that capability very soon. Now, pilots offshore will get 8 to 30 seconds of additional warning time before a crash would occur. That’s a huge advan- tage. It’s like having parking sensors on your car so you don’t back into another vehicle you can’t see or didn’t notice.
ROTOR: Getting competing companies with different cultures to work together must be a challenge.
HASKINS: It’s not easy, but I think every- one involved has come to see that the pur- pose outweighs the obstacles. Naturally, everyone wants to make sure
their data is safe and will remain protected and confidential. So we adopted a memo- randum of understanding on how we would protect that data. We’ve gotten lots of good support from people throughout the industry, including the oil and gas companies, whose money ultimately pays for this, to finance and build our systems. Once we really started sharing data, our
members realized they were working on many of the same things. Not only could they save money by collaborating, but we’d be getting a much better and broader set of data to analyze by sharing. And it’s working.
ROTOR: How is this approach to enhancing safety in offshore helicopter operations bet- ter than the traditional approach?
HASKINS: By having a strategy with accident-prevention goals, we’ve moved from compliance-based thinking on safety to safety innovation thinking. Our actions aren’t linked to just comply- ing with the regulations but to having the achievement of real innovations as a value and a goal across the industry. And we’re being careful to use the data
we’re getting to define sequentially what problem areas we’ll address. We’ll identify a problem that’s impacting all our members and work on an innovative solution that we can turn into a new best practice that can be widely adopted. Then we’ll move on to another problem we’ve identified. We can’t solve every problem at once,
but we’re attacking them systematically with the goal of making real differences.
WINTER 2020 ROTOR 23
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