Helicopter Operations Safety Bulletin

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has commenced the publication of a safety bulletin for the helicopter industry. This follows an external review of the Bureau undertaken in 1999. The review contained a number of recommendations, from which the production of this bulletin has emerged.

The bulletin will be published twice yearly. From time-to-time additional bulletins will be published in response to requests for information on specific subjects from the industry. If a particular problem becomes evident from the ATSB's monitoring of trends in various areas, this too will be included in the bulletin.

The bulletin is composed of 6 parts. These parts are:

• Current accident and incident trends covering the helicopter industry. Also trends in various areas will be presented.
• Selected occurrence reports from the Bureau's database that involve helicopter operations.
• Safety Recommendations that are likely to either directly or indirectly affect helicopter operations and the background behind the recommendation.
• A summary of CAIR reports.
• Selected overseas occurrences that have either a safety message or are of interest to the helicopter industry.
• Information about the ATSB website and other activities that the Bureau is undertaking that are of interest to the helicopter industry.