The U.S. air tour community and federal regulators have addressed many of the issues that pushed accident rates in a recent 10-year period well above averages for the rest of the nation’s aviation industry, but some problems persist, according to a new report on air tour safety concerns.1
Lingering problems include some operators’ lack of adequate flight surveillance programs, evidence of a need for stricter flight and duty hour limitations for air tour pilots, insufficient implementation of maintenance quality assurance programs and the need to eliminate a rule allowing U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) Part 91 operators to conduct commercial air tours within 25 mi (40 km) of their base without being subject to the more stringent safety requirements applied to Part 135 commuter and on-demand operators, said the report by Sarah-Blythe Ballard of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and …
