FAA Rotorcraft Monthly Accident Briefing - May
Attached is the Rotorcraft Monthly Accident Briefing for May 2023 (eighth month of FY23).
**Please access the information from this briefing directly anytime at the FAA’s publicly available, Rotorcraft Accident Dashboard.**
Find “Dashboard Navigation” near the top of the default page and click either “Historical Briefing” or “Make Model Breakdown” for access to all 3 pages of visualized and interactive data.
Monthly Summary
May Totals: 8 accidents, 1 fatal accident, 1 fatality
-The accidents during May were spread across seven different industry sectors, with only one industry sector with more than one event during the month.
FY23 Summary
FY23 Totals: 56 accidents, 10 fatal accidents, 22 fatalities
- All count and rate metrics for the eight month period of Oct-May showed improvement when measured against the same period for both the previous FY and the 5 year average.
Accidents (include both fatal & non-fatal accidents):
- The FY23 estimated accident rate for Oct-May was 3.17 per 100K hours (23% lower than same period in FY22, 12% lower than 5 year average for same period).
- The count of 56 total accidents for the first 8 months of the FY was the second lowest for that time period for the 41 years on record.
- Through 8 months in the FY, Instructional/Training (13 accidents) and Personal/Private (12 accidents) are the only two industry sectors with more than 6 accidents.
Fatal Accidents:
- The FY23 estimated fatal accident rate for Oct-May was 0.57 per 100K hours (34% lower than same period in FY22, 29% lower than 5 year average for same period).
- The count of 10 fatal accidents for the first 8 months of the FY tied for the second lowest Oct-May count for the 41 years on record.
- Six of the eight months in the FY have had either 1 or 0 fatal accidents, only the third time in the 41 years on record that has occurred for Oct-May (FY88 and FY14 were the others).
- Through May, FY23 is trending closer to the fatal accident rates observed from FY14-FY17 (range of .52 to .63) than what was observed for FY18-FY22 (range of 0.64 to 0.94).
Fatalities:
- The FY23 estimated fatality rate for Oct-May was 1.25 per 100K hours (16% lower than same period in FY22, and also 26% lower than 5 year average for same period).
U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) Calendar Year Metrics
- Goal: Reduce the 5 year average fatal accident rate to 0.55 per 100K hours by 2025. The USHST uses the 5 year average fatal accident rate from CYs 2014-2018 (0.62 per 100K hours) as their baseline for measurement.
- The CY 2019-2023 5 year average fatal accident rate was 0.74 per 100K hours through May 2023.
Lee Roskop
Aviation Safety Coordinator (Rotorcraft)
Fleet Safety Section, AIR-723
Operational Safety Branch, Compliance & Airworthiness Division
817-222-5337
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