Faa Sar: Fill & Download for Free

If you just look at accidents per flight hour, it looks like helicopters are more dangerous.This is misleading.Take a look at slide 4 of this presentation. That shows the proportions of helicopter accidents by kind of operation.Search and rescue alone is almost 40% of accidents. Add in agricultural work and utilities patrol (which essentially means power line inspection), almost 58% of helicopter accidents are in the course of the most dangerous operations done with any non-military aircraft.The FAA says the fatal accident rate across all aviation types in the US is 0.84 per 100,000 flight hours, less than the 1.02 it reports for helicopters.But if you exclude those dangerous operations, helicopters are significantly safer than airplanes.Yes, they’re mechanically very complicated and quite difficult to fly. That makes most pilots quite paranoid about the machine itself, which is the correct attitude towards any aircraft, and that helps.Later in the presentation, they show that about half of helicopter accidents are due to attempting to fly VFR in actual instrument conditions; in regular language, attempt to fly in clouds or fog without proper preparation, you die.This happens more often in SAR operations, which are often conducted in marginal weather, but it also happens in certain kinds of operation where pilots either have an exaggerated sense of their own capabilities or are under a lot of pressure from employers or clients.So, you shouldn’t be afraid of helicopters in normal commercial tour operations and the like. They’re actually safer than airplanes for those activities.But don’t push charter pilots or yourself into flying in marginal weather. Better to end up driving, arrive late, or decide not to go.As for SAR operations, well, I’ve done them in airplanes (as crew, not a pilot) and we had the great advantage of being able to transition to instrument flight at any moment with no warning. We only did it once in six years, and that was for convenience not because we were forced to; we would otherwise have had to divert to a different airport than where we took off.Not every SAR helicopter crew has that option, and my view is that it is irresponsible not to equip and train SAR crews for that. That still won’t make SAR helicopter work nearly as safe as other operations, it’s inherently dangerous, but it doesn’t need to be quite that dangerous.That said, even SAR work isn’t as dangerous as driving a car, in accidents per hour.

I talked with someone from my local Search-And-Rescue group about this a couple months back and to my surprise the biggest issue is regulation. Hobbyists can fly RC aircraft without much worry about FCC or FAA rules (though you do have to register with the FAA now). But SAR is a government agency (in my area it’s a county thing), and this is subject to more burdensome rules from the FCC and FAA. The radio frequencies that we hobbyists use are only available to hobbyists. The aircraft rules that we hobbyists operate under are basically exceptions to the ‘real’ rules, which apply to commercial entities and government agencies. Commercial radios and aircraft drive up the cost very quickly.Also, in my area, they do a lot of work in forested areas, where visibility is a challenge, and the video quality of wireless systems today limits their usefulness.As someone who flies RC aircraft for fun, I was wondering if there was a way to put some of my toys to use, but apparently that’s not the case today. I’m guessing that the technology and regulations will evolve to make commercial RC aircraft less expensive, more capable (especially in terms of flight time and image quality) and less of a legal burden, but we’re not there yet.

There is no "permission" required for some categories of airport and flights. Flights in Canada and the U.S. require no flight planning notification of less than 25 miles from originating un-controlled airport and returning to the same point. Flights exceeding 25 miles and landing at another airport of any class requires a flight plan to be filed, opened and closed within 60 minutes of arrival. Failure to do so means SAR is launched and a investigation will be ordered. So somebody is going to know you are filling and be in the air.There are some different flight categories in the U.S. that I'm not up to date on. Check with the FAA.