On wednesday February 1, over 90 helicopter professionals met together to the annual Helicopter Safety Seminar at the Flight Standards District Office in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sharing demonstrations, ideas and perspectives upon safety requirements and regulations in helicopter missions.

The Federal Aviation Administration provided several depositions for the group.

HAI showcased presentations from Director of Safety Outreach Stan Rose and Dr. Steven Sparks, HAI’s new director of safety. Interesting presentations came also from Bruce Webb, Airbus Helicopters; Mike Hartell, Minnesota Department of Transportation; Eric Monson and Eric Nilson, Lake Superior Helicopters; and Lt. Craig Benz, Minnesota State Patrol.

The Helcopter Safety Seminar is always an important opportunity to monitor and develop the debate on the future of helicopter safe missions.

Source: https://www.rotor.org/Publications/ROTORDAILY/

The United States Helicopter Safety Team will host the 2017 Infrastructure Summit at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Washington DC, on February 16-17.

The meeting was launched last year for the first time, and is now expected to foster discussions about the future of helicopter infrastructure within the realm of the low altitude environment of the National Airspace System.

Key topics will be: database integrity standards, accident investigation check list for infrastructure, infrared lighting standards for NVG and NVIS operations, single engine IFR aircraft certification, low level IFR routing criteria and implementation, HEMS weather tools, real time mesoscale analysis and in-cockpit weather improvements.

“The top three fatal accident categories – Loss of Control, Unintended IMC and Low-Altitude Flight – are all elements that can be majorly impacted by a well-designed infrastructure. A robust and well thought out infrastructure can be depended upon when pilots experience UIMC and are key pieces to preventing loss of control and CFIT accidents”, notes Rex Alexander, Co-Founder of HeliExperts Intl LLC and coordinator for the Summit.

Partecipants will be groups and companies that are some way involved with the following issues:

• Heliport Safety, Standardization, Education and Oversight
• Low Altitude IFR Infrastructure Design and Integration
• Aviation Weather Gathering, Dissemination & Reporting

Source: http://www.ihst.org