The incessant noise of tour helicopters often disrupts the tranquility of remote areas of Hawaii. Air tour crashes also have taken the lives of 85 people over the years, a sobering statistic that puts Hawaii at the top of the National Transportation Safety Board’s list of states with the most such accidents since it began keeping track.
Now, Hawaii’s congressional delegation has introduced two bills designed to improve air tour safety and reduce noise for local residents here and across the country.
U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and U.S. Reps. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) and Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) have introduced the Air Tour and Skydiving Safety Improvement Act, first introduced by Schatz and Hirono in 2020, to create new safety standards that protect passengers on air tours as well as make skydiving flights safer, they announced Thursday in a news release.
The Hawaii Air Tour Management Act will require the Federal Aviation Administration to work with the state to create a new management plan to reduce the noise generated by the tour aircraft.
“The constant noise and tragic number of accidents we’ve seen in Hawaii have made it clear that we need to do more to both make air tours less disruptive for residents and safer for passengers and pilots,” Schatz said. “Our two bills will apply new standards to make air tours safer, help air tour companies operate more responsibly, and reduce noise.”
Hirono said that while these tours contribute to Hawaii’s economy, “repeated crashes and safety incidents have underscored the need to do more to protect passengers, operators and communities.”
“Safety must be the top priority for air tour operators. This bill will help prevent the future tragedies by strengthening the safety regulations governing air tours in Hawaii and across the country.”
Case said, “Severe safety and community disruption concerns from tour helicopter and small aircraft operations have been rampant for several years if not decades, and it is ignoring the facts and reality to assume the operators will self-regulate or that the FAA will do so in any meaningful way.”
Case spoke out against the FAA after multiple crashes in 2019.
Just hours after a helicopter crash in a remote part of Kauai with six passengers and a pilot on board, he called for the FAA to follow the NTSB’s safety improvement recommendations.
That same year, a tour helicopter crashed in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Kailua on Oahu’s Windward side, killing a 28-year-old Chicago woman, a 76-year-old Australian woman and the 28-year-old pilot.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle” no one on the ground was injured or killed, Case said.
A 2019 skydiving plane crash at Dillingham Airfield, one of the deadliest U.S. civil aviation accidents in the past decade, killed 11.
Tokuda introduced the Air Tour and Skydiving Safety Improvement Act and said both bills will “ensure that commercial tour operators meet many of the same safety requirements as commercial and charter flights, resulting in better management of Hawaii’s airspace as a whole.”
The news release said that “because of a gap in federal law, certain commercial air tour operators are subject to less stringent safety standards,” intended for small, private recreational flights. “Most commercial air tours and charter flight operators are subject to more rigorous safety and training standards” under the U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations.
