The Chinook helicopter was flying in Afghanistan.  Without warning, one of the helicopter’s two engines flamed out.  The helicopter crashed.  Eight service personnel were killed and fourteen were severely injured.

The victims and their families sued the helicopter’s various manufacturers, including Boeing, Honeywell and Goodrich.  They claimed that the helicopter’s engine quit because of a defect in

After a helicopter accident, many airplane pilots are quick to conclude that the helicopter pilot violated one aviation regulation or another.  But the laws that airplane pilots know so well do not always apply to helicopters. Rather, helicopters operate largely under their own set of rules. Some of the differences between the rules applicable to airplanes and helicopters are:

Minimum Altitudes

Some pilots refuse to fly piston-powered helicopters, insisting instead on turbine-powered machines.  Turbine engines, their argument goes, are much less likely to fail in flight than piston engines. Though more expensive to purchase and to operate, the reliability of turbine-powered helicopters makes them safer than their piston-powered counterparts.

Does that mean the new Robinson R66, with its Rolls-Royce turbine engine, will

In 1994, the FAA — hoping to reduce the number of helicopter tour crashes in Hawaii — promulgated a controversial rule that set minimum altitudes for Hawaiian sight seeing flights.

According to an article appearing this spring in Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, after the rule went into effect the overall number of helicopter crashes in Hawaii decreased

The easy answer: the applicant is the Pilot in Command and is fully responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft, not the FAA check pilot. But what about when the check pilot attempts to simulate an engine failure by chopping the throttle? At that point, hasn’t the check pilot assumed control of the aircraft?

Well, that’s