While accident rates in the offshore transport sector are decreasing, fatal accidents are trending in the opposite direction, according to the latest safety report from offshore helicopter association HeliOffshore.
Using aircraft data provided by OEMs and accident information from a variety of sources, the 2025 HeliOffshore Safety Performance Report shows that in the five years from 2020 to 2024, Western OEM helicopters operating offshore transport flights suffered 19 accidents. Ten of these were fatal, resulting in the deaths of 27 people.
This represents a fatal accident rate of 3.36 per million flight hours, or 1.47 per million sectors.
In comparison, IATA estimates a global five-year fatal accident rate for fixed-wing aircraft as about 0.18 per million sectors.
“HeliOffshore’s membership has united around our Safety Strategy, which is targeted to eliminate fatalities in our industry, with an interim goal of closing the gap to fixed-wing commercial air transport,” the report states. “Let’s all take deliberate and determined action to eliminate the most common accident types.”
While the rolling five-year accident rate has shown a slight, but steady decrease from 2013 to 2017’s figure of 7.32 per million flight hours to 6.39 per million flight hours across 2020 to 2024, the five-year average fatal accident rate has generally increased over the last 12 years.
Between 2013 and 2017, the rate was 2.89 fatal accidents per million flight hours, and had been trending down, reaching a low of 1.76 per million flight hours for the five-year period between 2017 to 2021. Since then, however, it has continued to rise.
Last year alone saw two fatal offshore helicopter accidents — a Bristow-operated search-and-rescue Sikorsky S-92 off the coast of Norway, and a Eastwind Aviation Sikorsky S-76C+ off the Nigerian coast — with the combined loss of nine lives.
“The data reveals a clear picture: there is more work we can and must do to meet our critical mission of ensuring no lives are lost in offshore aviation,” the report concludes.
“We recognised a positive trend in safety performance in recent years, during and immediately following the pandemic,” the report states. “Let’s ask ourselves: what has changed in recent years to reverse that temporary, positive trend?”
HeliOffshore says the most common types of offshore accidents over the last 12 years are loss of control in flight (LOC-I); controlled flight into terrain or water (CFIT), and system or component failure or malfunction — non-powerplant (SCF-NP).
The association recommended operators reference its Safety Performance Model — which has been revised following the report’s publication — to explore methods to help prevent these common accident types.
Snapshot of the offshore market
According to data provided by Airbus, Bell, Leonardo, and Sikorsky, as of Jan. 1, 2025, the most common type flying offshore was the Leonardo AW139, with 365 aircraft (representing 26 percent of the offshore fleet).
There were also 202 Sikorsky S-76s, 196 Sikorsky S-92s, 154 Bell 212s/412s, 70 Airbus AS365/H155s, 83 Bell 407s, 52 Bell 206s, and 295 “other” aircraft working offshore.
Of these, there are 48 Airbus H175s, 33 Leonardo AW189s, 45 H145s, and 36 AW169s. Interestingly, there are still 38 Airbus AS332/H225s reported as working in the offshore sector.
Offshore flight hours appear to have stabilized following the steady decline from 2013’s peak of about 1.3 million to about 700,000 in 2019. The 500,000 flight hours of the Covid-hit 2020 represent the nadir, with the last four years all seeing close to 600,000 flight hours.
