OPERATIONS
As a successful business leader your time is valuable. Driving from your office on the north side of San Diego to a business meeting at the aerospace manufacturing complex near LAX can face a considerable obstacle: traffic on the infamous 405 highway. At any hour of the day you are likely to get stuck in a standstill traffic jam. Sitting in that traffic is a waste of your valuable time.
The wise commuter in urban areas like the LA Basin will allot a safety margin for their planned commute time, but if your meeting begins at 10 a.m. you will be driving up the 405 during the worst of the morning commute, requiring you to leave exceptionally early. In the business world, time is money. Being stuck in traffic is additional time lost that is essentially costing you money that you can’t buy back. It is time that you could be using to do important work for your business, or be with your family, or doing a fun recreational activity.
Being punctual for a business meeting is a reflection on your business skills and acumen. While showing up late at an important meeting might be met with empathetic reactions when you charge into the meeting claiming, “Sorry…traffic on the 405 was completely backed up,” the stress you endured while stuck in standstill traffic is unproductive.
Perhaps while sitting impatiently in these traffic jams you have considered, “If only I had a helicopter, I could zoom right over this traffic and go straight to the meeting location.” This is the situation faced by business executives in Brazil’s money capital of São Paulo. Its 20 million occupants utilize 5 million cars, 42,000 buses, 160,000 trucks and 875,000 motorbikes on its roads, leading to world-class gridlock. During the afternoon commute the estimated speed is less than 10 mph. Daily traffic congestion is so bad that the city has 193 heliports and 420 registered helicopters, according to the Brazilian Association of Helicopter Pilots. It is estimated that roughly 500 helicopter flights occur on a daily basis.
There are other reasons why helicopters can be a valuable asset to your company. They can land you closer to your destination, for example. If you have a business meeting in Lower Manhattan you can land at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. If you jet into London’s Oxford Airport for a series of meetings, a helicopter can quickly whisk you to the London Heliport in 22 min., putting you in the heart of the Imperial Wharf section of London.
Maybe you have visions of buying a helicopter to take you to a friend’s Malibu mountainside estate or a private ranch in the Idaho backcountry, or to grab some powder snow “first runs” from alpine crests. Before your imagination runs away with these dreams, it is necessary to come back to earth and talk about the realities of helicopter operations.
Costs
The lure of saving time comes at a cost, literally. Helicopters are mechanically complex machines, more so than fixed-wing aircraft. How much is a helicopter going to cost? This is a topic where you need an expert in helicopter cost accounting to come up with accurate estimates. Your operating costs will vary considerably from estimates provided online due to the specifics of your operation. Are you considering a new or used helicopter? Will it require two pilots or one pilot? Is it your intention to fly the helicopter yourself, or will you hire a pilot(s)? Do you want an IFR-capable helicopter? If so, then the budget needs to increase for IFR proficiency training, as well as the complexity of maintaining the instruments for IFR flight.
The buying process should carefully consider your potential needs, including performance, weather capabilities and cabin size. A sampling of some online sales websites reveals that single-engine turbine helicopters manufactured by Airbus, Bell, Leonardo and McDonnell Douglas range from $350,000 to $2 million. Newer VFR-only versions of these helicopters sell for $3million to $4 million. Airbus, Bell, Leonardo and Sikorsky manufacture twin-engine helicopters with extra cabin seating, faster speed, more cargo and IFR capability, but they require proficient IFR pilots, service center support and a substantial budget.
Mike Chase, who has four decades of experience managing corporate aviation departments, specializes in compiling data for AvBuyer. He did a side-by-side comparison of two popular, used single-turbine helicopters--the Airbus AS350, known popularly in the U.S. as the AStar, and the Bell 206L-4 LongRanger. The AS350 has a max payload of 1,647 lb. and a range of 292 nm, while the LongRanger has a 1,479-lb. max payload and 246-nm range. The long-range speed is 122 kt. in the AS350 vs. 110 kt. in the LongRanger. The AS350 burns 45 gal./hr. while the LongRanger uses 37 gal./hr. Total variable costs including fuel, maintenance labor, parts and miscellaneous run $743/hr. in the AS350 and $661 in the LongRanger.
Aircraft that are owned and operated by businesses may utilize the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System for depreciation, which allows a business to take a greater percentage of deductions in the first few years. This table varies depending on whether the aircraft is operated under FAR Part 91 or 135. Knowledgeable accountants will warn aircraft owners that utilizing a company’s aircraft on non-business flights may impact the allowable depreciation deductions.
There are other options to full ownership. Leasing policies can be written to allow a fixed number of flight hours. Leasing fees typically cover fuel, pilot and insurance. One of the advantages of a lease is that you can budget a definitive cost. This option can make sense if you don’t need a helicopter for instant on-demand or everyday usage.
Every rotorcraft needs plenty of routine maintenance. The complexity and number of moving parts in a helicopter are impressive. YouTube features several slow-motion videos of the motion of a rotor blade during a revolution. You can see that for each revolution the rotor blade bends up and down, changes its pitch angle and “leads/lags” (forward and backward). The rotor system goes through these changes about 400 times a minute (i.e., 400 rpm in the main rotor). That means that each individual component endures vibrations that create wear. These components need frequent attention to operate in near-perfect balance with adjacent components.
As a general rule, helicopters require about three times more maintenance than a jet or turboprop. They require expert maintenance that utilizes specialized maintenance tools to perform vital tasks such as blade balancing. Blade balancing is necessary because a slight imbalance in the track of rotor blades can create destructive vibrations within the rotor system.
If you already own a hangar with sufficient room to store your helicopter, you still need a method to move it inside and out. Skid-equipped helicopters of modest size and larger can be landed on a portable platform that is moved by a small tractor. This method looks deceivingly simple, but landing on these platforms requires the ability to “land on a dime,” and being off center by a couple of inches can risk a condition called “dynamic rollover” if a skid catches on a protuberance from the surface of the platform.
Insurance
Are you hoping to fly the helicopter yourself because you are already fixed-wing rated and assume that getting the add-on rating will allow you to do that? Merely complying with the FARs to earn the helicopter rating isn’t going to equate to qualifying for insurance. Be prepared for stiff insurance rates. As a general rule, aviation insurers specifically consider your time in rotorcraft and, in particular, “time in type.” There are plenty of online posts from businessmen who were rich enough to buy a nice Hughes 300 but couldn’t get insurance until they had “x” hours in type. Or they assumed they could do flight training in their helicopter to earn their rating, only to discover that most insurance companies won’t cover this. These individuals resorted to operating their helicopters without insurance, which is an eye-raising risky option.
To the uninitiated fixed-wing pilot, it is tempting to think that hovering a helicopter would be easy. Plenty of fixed-wing colleagues have said (in a tone of voice that indicated their self-rated expertise in aerodynamics), “It can’t be that hard just holding a helicopter motionless.” (Apologies for not warning my rotorhead buddies who are rolling off their chairs in laughter.) I could provide an explanation of why holding a helicopter steady in a hover is aerodynamically difficult, but the explanation would require pages explaining the fundamental aerodynamic differences between an airplane and helicopter. Instead, the most effective way to illustrate how helicopter flying is vastly different from fixed-wing flying is to take an introductory flight lesson in a helicopter. Don’t feel ashamed if you can’t hold the helicopter steady for more than a couple of seconds before the instructor needs to take the controls. Your first 15 flight hours learning how to hover will be spent in a protective area the size of a football field.
Robinson Helicopter Co. provides Safety Notices regarding the role of negative habit transfer for fixed-wing pilots who transition into helicopters. “The ingrained reactions of an experienced airplane pilot can be deadly when flying a helicopter. The airplane pilot may fly the helicopter well when doing normal maneuvers under ordinary conditions when there is time to think about the proper control response. But when required to react suddenly under unexpected circumstances, he may revert to his airplane reactions and commit a fatal error. Under those conditions, his hands and feet move purely by reaction without conscious thought. Those reactions may well be based on his greater experience, i.e., the reactions developed flying airplanes.”
Robinson’s Safety Notice # SN-29, “Airplane Pilots High Risk When Flying Helicopters” (revised June 1994), provides a number of examples. For example, an airplane pilot’s response to a stall-warning horn would be to immediately push forward on the yoke/stick and add power. In a helicopter, the application of forward cyclic would decrease the main rotor rpm even lower, to the point of inducing a rotor stall. In less than 1 sec. the pilot could stall the rotor, causing the helicopter to fall out of the sky. A rapid forward movement of the cyclic can also cause a low “G” condition leading to mast bumping, resulting in the rotor shaft or one blade striking the fuselage.
Another situation in which a dual-rated pilot might react inappropriately is during a retreating blade stall. The flight conditions that tend to create this situation include high forward speed, low rpm, hot-high-heavy, turbulent air and/or abrupt turns. The angle of attack on the retreating blade will exceed the critical AOA, resulting in an abrupt roll into the retreating blade side. It may be accompanied by a low-frequency vibration (an abnormal two per revolution vibration in a two-blade rotor) along with a nose-up pitch. How would a pilot with a predominantly fixed-wing background react to the rapid roll? It would be normal to counter the abrupt roll by moving the cyclic quickly to the opposite direction of the roll. This, however, would deepen the retreating blade stall. The recommended corrective action is to lower collective, increase rpm, reduce forward speed with aft cyclic and minimize maneuvering.
Add-On Training’s Gaping Holes
There are key missing ingredients in the “add on” training process. For example, most flight schools have policies and procedures that focus on minimizing risk in the training environment. Thus your exposure to weather will be (properly) constrained, as well as off-site landings. This means that you aren’t likely to be exposed to a helicopter’s limited weather capabilities including high winds, rain and icing. The flight school’s recommended off-site landing zones for practicing slope and pinnacle landings will be fairly benign. And by the way, during the training process for a private or commercial helicopter rating, it is entirely likely that you will never practice an autorotation to the ground.
There is minimal exposure to the plethora of unique human factors in rotorcraft flying. In the expedited process to get the helicopter rating you may not get adequate exposure to the challenges of hovering in poor visibility conditions, or worse, on a dark ramp. Maneuvering a helicopter is especially dependent on having a rich visual field to gauge the tiniest of motions for a precise hover or hover-taxi.
You aren’t likely to be exposed to the important issues concerning cockpit ergonomics that can affect your safety, health and performance. For instance, occupants of helicopters are exposed to “whole body vibration.” This can affect the ability of your eyes to see the instruments and the smoothness of your hand motions on the sensitive flight controls, and can cause degenerative wear in the discs of your back and neck.
Another concern of transitioning from fixed- to rotary-wing flying is the lack of training and experience to sense the slightest variation in vibrations that provide subtle but important signals of a component that needs to be properly inspected. Additionally, the quick “add on” process isn’t likely to train us in understanding whether a slight irregular sound or vibration means that we should head toward an airport or do an emergency landing because failure is imminent.
This is just a short list of the many aspects of real-world helicopter operations that you won’t be exposed to during the “add on” training process. Lengthy books have been written about the unique human factors of helicopter operations. In summary, it isn’t an exaggeration to state that helicopter operations are “an entirely different world” from fixed-wing flying, and the add-on process is just a bare minimum to show proficiency in handling a helicopter in the prescribed maneuvers in a strictly controlled training and testing environment.
Proficiency Training in Emergency Procedures
Another large difference between fixed- and rotary-wing flying is the aircraft’s reaction to a mechanical failure of a critical component. The flight control systems of a fixed-wing aircraft are much simpler, with fewer moving parts, than a rotorcraft. In general, the redundancy and relative simplicity of fixed-wing flight control systems means that malfunctions seldom occur and do not require exceptional skill for the flight crew. In contrast, when an important component fails within a helicopter’s flight control system, instant and proper reactions may be needed or else the helicopter can quickly enter into significant gyrations.
Many helicopter emergency procedures require complex “perceptual motor skills,” meaning that muscular movement is required as well as sensory control. Inexperienced pilots who are most in need of a safe training environment in which to make the many repetitions necessary to obtain the proper perceptual motor skills could benefit from access to flight training devices.
Helicopter owners and operators must keep their pilots proficient in helicopter emergency procedures. Should the in-house helicopter be used for this training? In many cases insurance companies have clauses nullifying coverage if damage occurs during training. Then there are the practical considerations like “what if something goes wrong” during the practice? Your damaged helicopter could be in the shop a long time for the repairs. The risk of damage from a small “slip” in technique can be significant.
The NTSB Safety Alert titled “Safety Through Helicopter Simulators” points out that improper performance of emergency procedures has led to numerous helicopter accidents. Deteriorating weather, helicopter limitations and performance characteristics restrict what scenarios can be performed in flight. During flight training, it is difficult to recreate the element of surprise and the realistic, complex scenarios that pilots may experience during an emergency. “Consistent, standardized simulator training will help prepare pilots for the unexpected and will decrease the risk of an accident,” the Safety Alert says.
The value of a simulator for training of critical procedures is unquestioned. The downside is that sending an organization’s pilots to that training requires the financial commitment to take them off the work schedule and provide travel, per diem and tuition.
Other Considerations
Before you leap into this considerable investment, be advised of some other limitations. You may have a large parking lot at your factory that you think would be an ideal location for a helipad. It may be, but with a lot of caveats. Don’t believe that a simple concrete pad is sufficient for a helipad. There are multitudes of important factors that must be considered. Some deal with zoning. Some deal with the practical necessity to have clear arrival and departure paths. Others deal with lighting and proper markings. Or how about snow removal? Just to give you an example of the complexity of this topic, you might be tempted to toss rock salt onto your helipad to help deice the surface. That is unwise, especially for a skid-equipped aircraft because it will expose your skids to a highly corrosive substance.
Another example is the site selection for a wind sock. Some might think that the placement of a wind sock is a simple process. It is just the opposite. I once had the incredible learning experience of working with Dr. Thomas Corke of the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Engineering on a helicopter site evaluation atop a high-rise building in an urban setting. Wind currents around adjacent buildings create significant zones of eddies and reversed flow that could cause a wind sock to flow in opposite directions from the prevailing wind. Dr. Corke showed us pictures of nearly 20 wind socks mounted at varying positions around the rooftop helipad; each of the wind socks was pointing in a different direction. Having accurate information of the wind at a helipad is absolutely vital, as the complexities caused by air flowing around obstacles, nearby buildings and/or elevated helipads is far more complicated that many pilots understand.
Helicopter operations inevitably spark noise complaints, and noise is probably the leading reason that attempts to build more heliports are stymied. This topic will require considerable attention if you are serious about implementing a helicopter that will operate at a site other than an established airport or heliport. (For further information about the complex issues involving helicopter noise, see “Center of Attention: London Heliport” [BCA, October 2014] and “Managing Helicopter Noise” [BCA, March 2015].)
You might think that a helicopter can land (nearly) anywhere. This is one of the great misunderstandings about helicopters. The issue is complex because each municipality may have its own laws governing whether a helicopter can land within its jurisdiction. Then there are the practical aspects of landing on unprepared surfaces. There are human factors galore regarding visual illusions when assessing the suitability of an off-airport, unprepared surface for a landing.
We will follow up on these important topics so that you can begin a deliberate process to weigh the pros and cons as well as valuing the necessity to obtain true helicopter experts.
Your time is valuable. Instead of sitting in traffic, you can be productive, which translates into positive ROI. If owning or operating a helicopter makes business sense, then it may be worth it…with the assumption that you involve rotorcraft experts to help mentor you through the long learning process.
