One year after the fatal crash of a sightseeing helicopter in the Hudson River, five U.S. representatives from New York and New Jersey have introduced legislation that would impose the strictest airline safety standards on commercial turbine-powered helicopter operations.
The lawmakers said their bipartisan bill, called the Helicopter Safety and Parity Act, is intended to achieve “safety parity between airplanes and helicopters by mandating the development of new safety rules and standards,” among other things.
According to one of the sponsors, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, “The bill puts forth a simple notion: helicopters should be held to the same safety standards as airplanes. Such a notion is common sense, and it’s time for our laws and regulators to catch up.”
However, the text of the bill does not seek equivalent safety standards for airplanes and helicopters broadly.
Rather, it would require certain helicopter operators currently operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135 — which regulates commuter and on-demand operations for both airplanes and helicopters — to instead comply with the safety equipment, pilot qualification, duty and rest, and maintenance standards of Part 121, which governs scheduled airline service.
Operators of small airplanes conducting similar sightseeing and charter operations would presumably keep operating under Part 135.
The legislation is a direct response to the crash on April 10 last year of a Bell 206L-4 LongRanger operated by New York Helicopter Charter, Inc. All six people on board were killed in the crash, including pilot Seankese Johnson and a family of five on a sightseeing tour of New York City: Agustín Escobar, Mercè Camprubí Montal, and their three young children, Agustín, Mercè, and Victor.
The helicopter departed the Downtown Manhattan Heliport at around 3 p.m. that day and passed by the Statue of Liberty before proceeding north along the Manhattan side of the Hudson River.
The helicopter made a U-turn at the George Washington Bridge and was heading south along the New Jersey side of the river when it broke apart in mid-air and fell into the water. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is still investigating the cause of the crash.
According to the NTSB’s preliminary report on the accident, the helicopter was operated as an air tour flight under Part 91 rules, rather than the stricter regulations of Part 135, although New York Helicopter Charter held a Part 135 air carrier certificate that was suspended by the FAA shortly after the crash.
Under a longstanding exemption in the Federal Aviation Regulations, air tour flights that depart from and return to the same airport and remain within a 25-mile radius of the airport are allowed to operate under Part 91.
The NTSB for years recommended that the FAA develop and implement national standards for all air tour operations within Part 135 or equivalent regulations, arguing that FAA inspectors have less leverage to control and oversee Part 91 operations. However, the FAA resisted this recommendation, which the NTSB last year classified as “closed – unacceptable action.”
The Helicopter Safety and Parity Act does not address Part 91 or the conversation around bringing all air tour operations under Part 135 rules. Instead, it asserts that passenger-carrying helicopter operations conducted under Part 135 are “substantially similar to” Part 121 airline operations and should be subject to the same rigorous standards.
The bill would require all operators of turbine-powered helicopters carrying two or more passengers for compensation or hire to “comply with safety equipment, training, and maintenance requirements equivalent to those applicable to Part 121 operations.”
Specifically, it calls for helicopters to be equipped with terrain awareness systems, cockpit voice recorders, and flight data recorders, and operators to comply with Part 121 standards for pilot qualification, duty and rest, and maintenance programs.
Part 121 rules were written for operators of large transport category airplanes who might carry millions of passengers annually, and would be exceptionally burdensome for small helicopter operators to comply with, to the extent they could do so at all. Some Part 121 equipment requirements do not readily translate to small helicopters, and the bill does not describe how “equivalent” requirements would be determined.
A shift to Part 121 pilot qualification standards would also dramatically shrink the pool of available pilots. Part 135 requires helicopter pilots operating under visual flight rules to have a commercial pilot certificate and at least 500 hours of flight time.
However, all pilots of Part 121 aircraft must hold an airline transport pilot (ATP) certificate, which generally requires at least 1,200 to 1,500 hours of flight time and significant instrument flight experience.
According to the FAA’s most recent statistics, while nearly 182,000 airplane pilots hold ATP certificates issued by the FAA, barely 4,000 helicopter and dual-rated pilots do.
In addition to requiring helicopter operators to comply with Part 121 standards, the Helicopter Safety and Parity Act would also authorize $50 million annually from 2026 to 2030 to carry out the requirements of the act, including rulemaking, enforcement, oversight, and the hiring and training of aviation safety inspectors to strengthen maintenance and operational surveillance of rotorcraft operators.
The bill calls for the FAA to complete rulemaking within 18 months after the legislation is enacted, and for operators to achieve full compliance no later than 24 months after the date of enactment.
The Helicopter Safety and Parity Act is likely to face strong resistance from the helicopter industry, although a spokesperson for Vertical Aviation International declined to comment on the proposed legislation.
Whether or not the bill actually moves through Congress, it is further evidence of the headwinds facing the industry in New York and New Jersey, where community groups and local lawmakers have sought to severely restrict or eliminate nonessential helicopter flights due to concerns over safety and noise.
“For too long, nonessential helicopters have caused public safety hazards and noise pollution for the residents of New York and New Jersey,” stated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, another one of the bill’s sponsors. “Last year’s crash was yet another in a long line of senseless tragedies and it is far past time that the FAA and Congress step up.”
