Helitech Portugal 2010 Conference

New for this year we are bringing the conference inside the exhibition hall. The thought provoking conference will be running over two days (Tuesday 5th and Wednesday 6th October) where you can hear best practice, industry challenges, regulator and insurers views, training solutions and how to negotiate contracts to meet your military or civil requirements.

Conference Themes are:
 Aerial Firefighting - contract tendering through to operation
 Simulation takes centre stage
 The Greener and safer rotorcraft
 Finding the Next Generation - plugging the gap

Click here to view the full conference programme or here to view the conference fees

With flying hours becoming an expensive commodity, helicopter operators are demanding more and more from their simulators. It is no longer enough to teach pilot procedures and emergencies; now they must provide complete crews with real-world flying skills such as load-lifting, SAR and confined area work. Not for the first time, the military got there first. So what’s on offer, and what’s on the horizon?

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a group of highly experienced pilots toils to develop international standards for flight training devices. The working group, involved in the “largest harmonization effort … in the history of flight simulation”, anticipates that internationally accepted standards will deliver significant benefits across the industry. We get an update on progress.

And what’s wrong with ground exams? Why do standards vary so widely across Europe? Is the tick-box method the best way to test the knowledge of student aircrew? The hot topic is testing to proficiency, rather than to pass-marks.

Now a huge business in Southern Europe, offering lucrative government contracts to operators with the right resources. The successful ones expand to seek opportunities outside their borders but pitching for the work can be a fraught process, mostly due to a lack of standardisation in proposed agreements. There must be an easier way – we look at some options.

And for helicopter companies considering a future in firefighting, how do you set up the infrastructure? From assessing customer needs to deploying the flight crews, we take you through the process.

Finally we assess two new platforms entering the marketplace, both of which – it is fair to say – were originally designed with different roles in mind.

While operators constantly seek out higher performance and lower running costs, today’s society requires less pollution, less noise and increased recyclability. Reconciling the two demands may appear an impossible task but manufacturer R&D teams, coordinated by the European Commission, are grasping the nettle.

Part of an aerospace-wide initiative, the Green Rotorcraft project is divided into six groups, tasked with designing improvements in areas such as airframe drag and rotor blade design. Together, they are expected to deliver huge cuts in emissions, a 50% cut in perceived aircraft noise and a green product life-cycle, from design to disposal. All this by 2020.

So how are they doing? OEMs and scientists seconded to the Clean Sky project will brief us on progress so far; where the major challenges lie and on how earlier, more radical projects still have their part to play in their work.

As the “baby-boomer” generation of aircrew approaches retirement, how will the younger one gain the experience it needs to maintain the required skills-set and, it follows, the enviable safety record. When RAF winchmen leave their SAR bases in 2014, will there be enough civvies to replace them? How can civilian long-line pilots build the hours to make them marketable – and insurable – commodities? And why is the average age of a firefighting pilot – 57?

A discussion panel representing a wide range of specialities will debate the problem and look for common ground. Is there room to think outside the box? Could HEMS paramedics, for example, be cross-trained as SAR winch operators? Are offshore operators noticing any impact from navy-trained pilots flying less and less, these days, over the sea?