Suggestions to Refine the Recording of Helicopter Mishaps

The paper draws on the study of rotary wing crashes as part of the Full Spectrum Crashworthiness (FSC) Program conducted by the U.S. Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD). Such a study is only possible because the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center (CRC) collects, records, and makes available an extensive database of information about each crash. This paper makes suggestions for improving the gathering and recording of the mishap data with the objective of enabling future studies to draw more useful and supportable conclusions. The suggestions include both improved accident investigation techniques and increased instrumentation to record parameters that have proven difficult to estimate post crash. Recommendations are made in the areas of accounting for personnel on board the aircraft, the impact severity estimates and the consistency of the kinematics data.