Three chopper operators were on WorkSafe radar
Three helicopter companies flying to Whakaari/White Island were told two years ago they should be registered as adventure operators.
WorkSafe said it had repeatedly tried to get Volcanic Air, Kahu NZ and Aerius Helicopters to comply with the adventure activity regulations that require operators to pass independent safety audits.
The lack of registration of three of the four operators taking tourists to the island speaks to the chaos around adventure tourism regulation.
Just weeks before Monday’s fatal eruption, WorkSafe again told the companies they should be registered and it said the registration status of all operators would be part of its investigation into the disaster that killed at least eight people.
However, the helicopter operators claim they received conflicting advice about whether their White Island ground tours were covered by the adventure activity regulations, and they had spent months waiting for a definitive answer from WorkSafe.
The health and safety agency administers a register of 310 commercial adventure activity operators but White Island Tours, which takes visitors by boat, is the only registered White Island operator.
The regulations define adventure activities as those designed to deliberately expose participants to a serious risk to their health and safely, including deliberate exposure to dangerous terrain, and WorkSafe said that would include walking on an active volcano.
According to the WorkSafe website it is an offence for an adventure activity operator to be unregistered unless it is exempt by being covered by another regulatory body.
The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that while it covered aircraft operations, the ground component of a tour in which customers were transported by helicopter fell under WorkSafe.
The latter said it had been very clear in its communications to the White Island helicopter operators.
‘‘In our most recent correspondence, we advised Volcanic Air on 18 November 2019, that we considered that [it] had had sufficient time to consider the advice and reasoning from WorkSafe over an extended period and that we