Assessment of the feasibility of an extended range helicopter operational standard for offshore flights

Abstract

The accident rate of rotorcraft has improved significantly over the years but at a slow pace, and in any case the number of accident per flight hours is one or two order on magnitude higher than that of commercial aircraft. This could be reasonably related to the inherent higher risk associate with rotorcraft operations. This represent a strong evidence of the necessity to introduce airworthiness operation standards also in the rotorcraft community, as an effective mean to improve safety records, borrowing the experience done in the commercial air transport community with the introduction of ETOPS. In this paper a first proposal of development of a safety standard for helicopter offshore operation is discussed together with the possible support to this development that could be given by the EU H2020 NITROS project