Island 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 would be looking for clear movement towards compliance within a reasonable time-frame.’’
All three helicopter companies advertised guided tours of White Island ranging in price from $730 to $1095 with some trips open to children as young as 5.
When the eruption occurred, Volcanic Air had a pilot and four passengers on the island, two of whom received minor burns, and they were evacuated by boat after their chopper was wrecked in the explosion.
WorkSafe said it was up to the operators to assess whether they should register as adventure activities, but the system was ‘‘not opt in’’. But Volcanic Air chief pilot Tim Barrow said there had been confusion over whether the trips were classed as adventure activities and WorkSafe had flipflopped over whether helicopter companies flying to White Island for ground tours should be registered as adventure activities needing regular safety audits.
In a written statement, Barrow said discussions between WorkSafe and the three helicopter concessionaires visiting White Island about the need for registration had been ongoing for three years, and each company had received differing advice.
Barrow said his company would happily go on the register and it had recently been audited by Qualmark NZ, which looked at both its air and ground operations.
Aerius Helicopters said it was ‘‘in the same boat’’ as Volcanic Air regarding the registration issue and declined to comment further.
Kahu NZ chief executive and pilot Mark Law said it already underwent safety audits for its helicopter operations.
He did not believe the company needed to be on the adventure tourism register, and he had difficulty getting a definitive answer from WorkSafe about why it was necessary.
‘‘They only made that clear last month after two years of going back and forth.’’
Law said he had halted Qualmark audits because they seemed like a tickbox exercise and the auditor declined the offer of a trip to White Island to see how it was managed.
Qualmark, owned by Tourism New Zealand, runs a quality assurance programme for visitor activities and chief executive Gregg Anderson said it had ‘‘Qualmarked’’ Volcanic Air, White Island Tours and Aerius Helicopters.
Hemi Moreti is a lead auditor with AdventureMark, which does risk assessments of adventure tourism operators. He said White Island Tours had undergone annual audits for three years and ‘‘never had anything more than a minor non-conformity’’.
Those reports had been passed to WorkSafe.