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Rotorcraft Monthly Accident Briefing for January 2025

Lee Roskop
Feb 2
2 min read

Updated: Mar 3

Attached is the Rotorcraft Monthly Accident Briefing for January 2025 (fourth month of FY25).

(Covers Part 27, Part 29, and Restricted Category rotorcraft accidents to U.S. registered aircraft. Does not include gyrocopters or experimental aircraft.)

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

January Totals: 4 accidents, 1 fatal accident, 3 fatalities

- For the third time in the last four years, there were 4 or less accidents during the month of January. Prior to FY22, this had happened only once.

- Two of the four accidents during the month involved U.S. registered aircraft operating outside of the U.S.

- The single fatal accident during the month was U.S. registered but operating outside the U.S. (Paredones, Chile)

FY25 Summary

FY25 Totals: 23 accidents, 6 fatal accidents, 15 fatalities

Accidents (includes both fatal & non-fatal accidents):

- The FY25 estimated accident rate for Oct-Jan was 2.61 per 100K hours (22% lower than the same period in FY24 and 24% lower than the 5 year average for the same period).

- Together, Personal/Private and Instructional/Training have accounted for about 1/3 of all accidents so far in the FY. Each industry segment has accounted for 4 accidents through the first 4 months of the FY.

Fatal Accidents:

- The FY25 estimated fatal accident rate for Oct-Jan was 0.68 per 100K hours (1% lower than the same period in FY24 and 3% lower than the 5 year average for the same period).

- Two of the six fatal accidents so far in the FY were U.S. registered operating outside of the U.S. (1 in Australia, 1 in Chile).

- The six fatal accidents were distributed across 5 different industry segments.

Fatalities:

- The FY25 estimated fatality rate for Oct-Jan was 1.7 per 100K hours (48% higher than the same period in FY24, 15% higher than the 5 year average for the same period).

U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) Calendar Year Metrics

- The USHST began tracking its new goals for the CY2025-2029 (5 year) timeframe. The goals are by 14 CFR Operating Part, tracking the 5 year average fatal accident rates per 100K hours.

14 CFR Part	Baseline, CY2018-2022 (per 100K hours)	Goal, CY2025-2029 (per 100K hours)	Progress, CY2021-2025 (per 100K hours)
91	0.81	0.73 (10% reduction)	0.58
133	1.73	1.56 (10% reduction)	0.43
135	0.33	0.17 (50% reduction)	0.35
137	1.11	1.00 (10% reduction)	1.49