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FAA taking steps to prevent deadly helicopter fires
November 11, 2015 By USA Today
The Federal Aviation Administration plans to take a major step toward preventing people from being burned to death in helicopter crashes and will require newly manufactured helicopters to have systems that avoid fuel leaks, which have caused hundreds of fires that led to scores of deaths and serious injuries.
In announcing the new requirement, the FAA tacitly acknowledged that it has failed for decades to protect helicopter occupants from fires that sometimes ignite after rollovers, hard landings and mild crashes whose impact the occupants had survived.
Post-crash helicopter fires have been a known problem since the 1960s, and USA TODAY reported in 2014 that at least 79 people had died in the previous 20 years from burns or smoke inhalation after mild helicopter crashes. | READ MORE
