Kailua board to vote on banning helicopter flights over the town

The Kailua Neighborhood Board is expected to vote this evening on a resolution seeking a ban of tour helicopters over the beach town.

The resolution, approved by a subcommittee in mid-August, also asks for more stringent regulations of tour helicopters by the Federal Aviation Administration. It asks the FAA to restrict tour helicopters to an altitude of 2,000 feet above any neighborhood, public park or building, and that they remain at a minimum of one mile off-shore, as safety permits.

“There were three helicopter crashes in Windward Oahu in a six-month period of time,” said board chair Bill Hicks. “The one that attracted the most attention, of course, was the most recent one on Oneawa Street, but there was also one in Kaneohe Bay, and then there was another one further north, Sacred Falls. So three in a six-month period shifted the focus from an inconvenience and annoyance driven by noise to one of safety.”

A special subcommittee to address low-flying helicopters formed shortly after the fatal April 29 crash, when a Robinson R44 operated by Novictor Helicopters fell on Oneawa Street in a residential neighborhood, resulting in the deaths of the pilot and two passengers.

Currently, tour helicopters in Hawaii must fly at a minimum altitude of 1,500 feet over man-made structures and vehicles, but qualified pilots may deviate from that due to weather hazards or at the direction of air traffic safety control. They are not required to stay a mile offshore of Oahu.

The Kailua resolution is similar to one passed by the Diamond Head/Kapahulu/St. Louis Heights Neighborhood Board in August.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) proposed the Safe and Quiet Skies Act — sweeping federal legislation that would prohibit tour flights over military installations, national cemeteries, wilderness areas, parks and wildlife refuges.

In addition to the more stringent regulations, the Kailua board resolution asks Hawaii Helicopter Association members and other tour operators to immediately stop tour helicopter overflights of densely populated areas of Kailua. It asks furthermore, that overflights of less densely populated areas of Kailua “utilize multiple different routes so that the frequency of overflights over any given location is substantially reduced.”

The Hawaii Helicopter Association disagreed with most terms of the resolution.

“The Hawaii Helicopter Association is first and foremost about safety,” said executive director Melissa Pavlicek in an email. “All aviation operations must be adaptive to weather, geography, air traffic control instructions and other conditions, so regulatory inflexibility would cause us to be concerned about the possible implications for safe operations.… We plan to submit testimony to the Neighborhood Board addressing the safety concerns.”

Richard Schuman, operator of Magnum Helicopters, said the terms are unrealistic. Tour operators will continue to follow FAA guidelines, but they cover 49 other U.S. states.

“One shoe does not fit all situations,” said Schuman. “Speaking for my own company, we will not fly one mile offshore. We will not fly tours at 2,000 feet above the ground. We will continue to fly over the Kailua area.”

In addition, he said being mandated to fly over the ocean poses a safety issue, since helicopters conducting an emergency landing typically go into auto-rotation, ideally on land and possibly someone’s backyard, but not water.

He is cautiously optimistic that helicopter tour operators voluntarily would agree to take different routes to keep traffic from being concentrated over one area of Kailua on a given day. Perhaps that could happen within several months.