EASA has published its Safety Review for 2022 which analyses accident and serious incident data for 2021 and compares it with averages over the period 2011-21. The obvious caveat is that, especially for helicopters traffic data for the years 2020 & 21 are both hard to quantify and statistically anomalous.
Furthermore, since the figures are not normalised with traffic data it is hard to draw hard and fast conclusions. Even so, the data shows that during 2021 there were nine fatal accidents involving EASA member state registered helicopters which was similar to 2020 and significantly below pre-pandemic values. As may be expected HEMS operations, since, together with law enforcement and offshore operations, continued largely unabated through the pandemic had the poorest record with two fatal accidents and seven non-fatal.
With those caveats, the Agency says that when the data is compared with the longer term trends appears to show a continuing improvement in safety in rotary operations but warns that “It should also be highlighted that any tangible trend should be based on a multi-year observation. It is therefore prudent to see if the figures in the coming years will confirm or refute any significant decreasing trend in the number of helicopter accidents and serious incidents”.
The full report is available for download on the EASA website or by clicking here
