Representative Ed Case

Dear Friend:

The July 11^th crash of still another tour helicopter, this one off the Kauaʻi coast and killing three people, demonstrates tragically that the tour helicopter/small aircraft industry, and its federal regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), have done nothing to improve air and ground safety despite accelerating incidents and deaths.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency responsible for investigating incidents and advising the FAA on needed safety improvements, there have been 101 tour helicopter incidents throughout Hawai‘i since 2000. Thirty resulted in actual injuries, affecting 47 individuals, and seventeen were fatal, resulting in a heartbreaking total of 68 deaths.

Just a week before the latest fatal accident, the NTSB, which has been strongly criticizing the FAA for failure to upgrade tour helicopter safety over a number of years, had again written the FAA to express deep concerns with the operating practices of Hawai‘i air tour operators and their pilots. The NTSB especially highlighted risky weather-related practices and inadequate communication on heavily trafficked sightseeing routes. A copy of the NTSB’s letter to the FAA is here, and a copy of the NTSB’s preliminary report on the July 11^th fatal Kauaʻi crash, which mirrors many of the NTSB’s overall concerns, is here.

Separately but related, the Hawai‘i tour helicopter industry worked within our Hawai‘i State Legislature in the recently-completed session to kill a measure to increase minimum commercial tour helicopter/small aircraft liability and property damage insurance requirements to the same basic industry standards as other states with high commercial tour aircraft activity. This bill, which would not only provide far more adequate compensation for victims of accidents as well as higher insurance-imposed safety requirements, had already passed the House and Senate and was in final conference. But for the industry, no reasonable mandatory insurance is acceptable, and they were successful in their goal of derailing the bill’s passage.

Meanwhile, the disruption of communities all across Hawai‘i from high-volume, low-altitude, excessively loud route practices such as turning and hovering, and other activities, without any sensitivity or self-regulation by the industry, and with the complicity of the FAA, continues to accelerate. As one graphic example, see this picture of tour helicopter routes and activity over Kauaʻi during a recent period; there is no community, no park or other special place, no area untouched (a similar pattern of risk and community disruption is shown for most other islands).

A recent well-researched article in Civil Beat Honolulu lays much of this out in detail here.

I provide this information both to update you and as context for this notice of the Hawai‘i tour helicopter industry’s “Air Tour Safety Conference” upcoming next Monday, September 23^rd, through Tuesday, September 24^th at the Hawai‘i Convention Center. This conference claims that it is intended to address safety issues within the air tour industry, with an agenda that encompasses open NTSB safety recommendations. Not only has the industry failed to show any interest in or ability to self-regulate for safety, but it makes no acknowledgment of the other glaring issue of community disruption, as to which it has also shown no interest in or ability to self-regulate.

However, it is a rare opportunity to share concerns directly with the industry and government regulators, and so I encourage your attendance to amplify our collective concerns. Here is the conference webpage together with signup information: Air Tour Safety Conference.

As always, please stay in touch as we pursue our mutual goal to maximize safety and minimize disruption from the activities of this unsafe and disruptive industry.

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