The Federal Aviation Administration instituted new safety regulations for Hawai'i air tours this month and beefed up its local inspection staff after a critical report on a September 2004 helicopter crash on Kaua'i that killed five.

The new FAA regulations address issues such as pilot fatigue and pilot training on Hawai'i's unique weather and terrain conditions. They also call for annual air tour safety meetings and developing an automated tracking system that will make it easier to determine whether pilots are following regulations. The rules apply to helicopters and airplanes.

The move resulted from recommendations made in February by the National Transportation Safety Board, which cited its concern over the safety of one of Hawai'i's most popular tourist pastimes. An estimated one in 10 visitors to Hawai'i in 2005 took an air tour, representing more than 750,000 passengers.

A typical 45-minute trip can cost about $200 per person.

There have been 36 fatal air tour crashes in Hawai'i since 1964, according to the NTSB database. The total number of accidents found in the database was 212.

The FAA last updated regulations for tour operators in Hawai'i in 1994, requiring minimum experience for pilots, mandatory preflight briefings for passengers, and pontoons or life jackets.

The agency yesterday concluded a two-day meeting in Honolulu to discuss the new regulations and other safety issues with Hawai'i air tour operators.

Nigel Turner, president and chief executive officer of Heli USA, said the meeting "was very positive." Heli USA carries about 160,000 passengers annually on its Kaua'i and O'ahu helicopter tours. The company also flies in the Grand Canyon.

"It's good for everyone to get together and talk about the industry and what new technology is out there," said Turner, who defended the industry's safety record and FAA oversight.

"The system isn't flawed. My own company has flown over 1 million people, and when you put it into statistics, it's a very safe industry."

The new rules arose from a sometimes contentious relationship between two federal agencies that oversee different aspects of the air industry.

The FAA is charged with regulating air travel in the United States; the NTSB investigates all major transportation accidents and, in many cases, issues safety recommendations aimed at preventing further accidents.

NTSB investigations are sometimes critical of the FAA, and its recommendations can require changes in FAA policies.

The NTSB went as far as suggesting that the fatal September 2004 accident on Kaua'i might have been prevented. In a Feb. 27 safety recommendation letter, the NTSB said it "concludes that the FAA has not provided sufficient resources for the Honolulu (office) to implement air tour surveillance. Such surveillance, in the months before the accident, may have detected and corrected the accident pilot's risky flying practices, such as low-altitude, off-route ridge crossings and flight into clouds and reduced visibility."

In another development, the FAA said yesterday that a new air tour inspection unit in the FAA's Honolulu Flight Safety District Office was established last week.

The unit will be "devoted strictly to air tour inspections, both fixed-wing and helicopter," said FAA regional spokesman Ian Gregor. The office initially will be staffed with 10 veteran air safety inspectors, and will result in more time and effort devoted to that part of the industry.

"The importance of this is that it concentrates resources on air tours. We're going to have more man hours devoted to the air tour industry," he said.

CRITICAL REPORT

The new FAA rules put into place this month are in response to the February 2007 NTSB report that focused on a 2004 Bali Hai Helicopters crash that killed the pilot and four others but also referred to other air tour accidents. The FAA for the most part enacted all the recommendations of the NTSB report.

Attempts to reach Bali Hai's former owner, James Le, about items critical of his company's policies were unsuccessful yesterday. The company went out of business after the crash.

In the report, the NTSB noted that a significant number of recent crashes involve pilots new to Hawai'i, with its island-specific weather patterns and rugged mountains.

As a result, the FAA ordered training procedures — with testing — for new pilots and old, addressing their knowledge of weather, mountain flying, routes and more. It also would have them study previous accidents.

The NTSB took particular note of possible pilot fatigue associated with company policies that keep pilots in or next to their helicopters all day long, sometimes eating at their seats, and possibly remaining purposely dehydrated to avoid needing to use restrooms. In Bali Hai's case there was no restroom for pilots.

"The lack of scheduled breaks, the short turnaround times between flights, and the unavailability of private restroom facilities probably discouraged consumption of food and liquids during the workday. ... This increased the risk of dehydration and other physiological problems, which could have degraded performance," the NTSB report said.

The new FAA regulations require pilots be given operational breaks and place limits on both the number of flights they can fly and how many hours they can fly.

ANNUAL MEETINGS

The safety report also calls for annual safety meetings for air tour operators to review air safety and other issues.

Gregor could not confirm whether this week's meeting was the first of those annual sessions, but he said representatives of the FAA, tour operators and the Helicopter Association International were called together to review industry safety in response to two fatal helicopter tour crashes in March on Kaua'i.

"They are comprehensively looking at the helicopter and fixed-wing air tour operations in Hawai'i, looking at ways to improve safety," Gregor said.

He said a committee would be formed to continue reviewing air tour safety, and that more meetings would be held.

"This is just the kicking off point," he said.

When the NTSB recommendations were announced in February, several industry officials said they already had in place pilot training and scheduling policies that were being recommended by the NTSB. But there was also a feeling, shared by the FAA, that voluntary compliance with safety recommendations is more effective than increased regulation.

One change air tour operators would like to discuss is the NTSB's recommendation to review whether a requirement that tour helicopters maintain a minimum altitude of 1,500 feet is creating safety problems. The rule was meant to address noise concerns for residents on the ground, but it also forces air tours to fly at altitudes where they are more likely to encounter clouds, said Heli USA's Turner.

"Five hundred to 800 feet is a good mark for safety. If you do have issues (in flight) you're well aware of the mountains and clear of the clouds, and that's the mark that's used in the rest of the United States," he said.

UPGRADE TRACKING

On a longer-term issue, the NTSB called on the FAA to expedite efforts to install automatic tracking devices on tour aircraft, so that both the FAA and helicopter operators themselves can identify the flight paths pilots use, and determine whether they are following federal air regulations and company policies. The devices are called automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, or ADS-B units.

The FAA said that the state of Hawai'i wants these devices on all tour aircraft by 2013, but that the FAA is working with air operators to try to achieve voluntary agreement to install them sooner.

Gregor, the FAA spokesman, would not confirm that the staffing changes at the Honolulu office are linked to the NTSB report on the Bali Hai crash, but that report did include this language: "Honolulu (Flight Safety District Office) staffing has remained below its authorized level. According to the Honolulu FSDO manager, at the time of the Bali Hai accident, the FSDO was about 10 inspectors short."

As part of the staffing, the remaining portion of the 40-person FAA Flight Safety District Office in Hawai'i will be devoted to other parts of the industry, among them scheduled air carriers and general aviation.

Gregor said the FAA also will hire seven more people in the short term, but he was not sure how they would allocated.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.