More than 20 years after first recommending that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) require crash-resistant flight recorder systems on aircraft not already required to have them, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is taking the recommendation directly to helicopter manufacturers.
The NTSB said in early June that it had issued safety recommendations to six manufacturers ─ Airbus Helicopters, Bell, Leonardo Helicopter Division, MD Helicopters, Robinson Helicopter Co. and Sikorsky ─ explaining that it was calling on them to install crash-resistant systems in all turbine-powered helicopters to record data, audio and video, “since the Federal Aviation Administration has not implemented a series of NTSB recommendations made in 2013 and 2015.” (Similar recommendations were issued to the FAA as early as 1999.)1
The NTSB said the earlier recommendations were issued after the agency’s accident investigators determined that their work was hinde…
