EFFECT OF IMPROVED HELICOPTER CRASHWORTHINESS DESIGN ON HELICOPTER ACCIDENT STATISTICS

In order to minimize the severity of helicopter accidents, the modern generation of helicopters, the UH-60 Blackhawk and the AH-64 Apache, have been designed with more stringent crashworthiness criteria than were the early generation helicopters. These more stringent criteria impose weight and cost penalties into the helicopter. The question has been raised as to whether these penalties are justified. A comparison is made between the crash experience of these modern generation helicopters versus the crash experience of the early generation helicopteres. It is shown that the increased crashworthiness criteria of the modern generation helicopters are justified by the accident statistics. The variation with design crash velocity of crash-fatality and crash-injury rate per million flight hours, and of the probability of a fatality and/or major injury, given a Class A/B accident, have been established. These trends can be used to predict the effect of different crash design requirements on the accident statistics of future helicopters.