Chopper safety shock

Commercial helicopter safety standards are under fire, with an industry leader saying pilots have a workplace death rate 75 times the national average.

The comments by Civil Aviation Authority director Graeme Harris were made after an interim Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) into a Wanaka crash in October, which killed pilot Nick Wallis and Department of Conservation (DOC) workers Paul Hondelink and Scott Theobald, found the doors of the Hughes 500 helicopter opened in flight, allowing the over-trousers being stored to fly out and tangle in the tail rotor.

TAIC chief commissioner Jane Meares said the doors on the same hired Hughes 500 helicopter opened in flight three times in the month before the accident, though none were recorded in the operator’s incident reporting system.

In an email newsletter to industry members, Harris said that over the last decade, 16 of the 29 employee deaths in commercial aviation involved helicopters.

He said that based on figures from 2011 to 2017, the fatality rate for commercial helicopter pilots per 1000 workers on an annual basis was 75 times the national average for all workplaces, compared with 44 times the average for forestry, which was the next worst workplace.

Harris said he was publicising the statistics to raise awareness of the problem and what could be done about it.

Aviation New Zealand chief executive John Nicholson said there was no disagreement over the need to improve helicopter safety, but the CAA figures were misleading.

They assumed a total helicopter industry work force of 1100, but with 131 commercial operators flying more than 500 choppers, employee numbers including ground crew and office staff were likely to be at least four times that, he said.

The rates for all helicopters had been trending down over the past three years and were now at 1.13 fatalities and 6.29 accidents per 100,000 hours flown.

TAIC also found evidence of ‘‘mast bumping’’ – where the inner rotor hits the rotor drive shaft – before Wallis’ brother, pilot Matt Wallis, crashed his Robinson R44II into Lake

Wanaka three months earlier, on July 21. Mast bumping usually results in the helicopter breaking up in flight.

It has been a concern relating to Robinson helicopters for some years, causing at least 20 previous deaths. Yet Robinsons continue to be widely used in NZ.

It appeared the main rotor blade struck and entered the cabin in flight, as it had marks on it matching damage to the flight instruments panel, the report said.

The Wallis brothers were the youngest of four brothers in Wanaka’s well-known Wallis family. They were both helicopter pilots in the family’s aviation and tourism businesses. Their father, Sir Tim Wallis, has survived 15 air crashes.

Jonathan Wallis, who is managing director of the family company, The Alpine Group, said the unexplained door separation on the Hughes was concerning, as was the in-flight break up of the Robinson in Matt Wallis’ crash.

‘‘Since that accident in October we have been made aware of numerous incidents of doors opening in-flight on the same aircraft make and model.’’

In the October 18 crash, the helicopter plummeted about 300 metres to the ground shortly after take off from Wanaka Airport.

Alpine Group had leased the helicopter from aviation company Airwork and Wallis, Hondelink and Theobald were heading to the first day of the DOC’s controversial tahr cull.

The report said that less than a minute after leaving the airport several witnesses saw the helicopter descend near vertically, with items trailing behind it, and the helicopter rotating at various angles.

The interim reports included no formal findings.