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BHA invites industry to upcoming annual Safety Day

By Vertical Mag | May 10, 2024

Estimated reading time 3 minutes, 1 seconds.

The British Helicopter Association (BHA) is hosting its annual Safety Day May 28, promising a full program of presentations focused on tail rotor issues.

The event will take place at Cranfield University’s new DARTeC facility, and is being presented in association with Airbus and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The day will include a presentation on unanticipated yaw control from Dr. Thomas Gogle, senior expert for product safety enhancement at Airbus Helicopters, and Christoph Schlueter, flight safety manager of Airbus Helicopters/ Flight Test Center.

Daan Vlaskamp, a training captain and researcher from KLM, will talk about the work the airline has done on surprise and startle — how it is starting to build in training for surprise and startle and where the helicopter world might be able to learn from that. He will be joined by Alex Pollitt, an expert on human factors.

Industry expert Merrick Forsyth is presenting a session on better training for tail rotor emergencies in the simulator, and the day will finish with a Q&A with Rick Newson from the CAA.

“We’re trying to look at how we can think about tail rotors differently,” Simon Mitchell, chairman of the BHA’s Onshore Committee told Vertical. “We’re doing this because we want to help the helicopter community. We want to reach out to helicopter pilots who wouldn’t normally do this — from the private Robinson R22 pilots to the chief pilots of the largest operators.”

Attendance will cost £20 for BHA members and £30 for non-members, with lunch and refreshments included. Space is limited to 100 attendees, and bookings must be made beforehand.

Mitchell said the BHA is encouraging all industry stakeholders — whether BHA members or not — to attend.

“We’re trying to reach across to the whole pilot community to say, ‘We really want to engage with you,’ ” he said. “We’ve organized for these leading figures in the industry to come along and share their thinking, and we just want to make sure that we get out and reach people.”

To book a place at the BHA Safety Day, email chris@britishhelicopterassociation.org.

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