The chief pilot for the nation’s largest air ambulance provider says his company is moving aggressively to train the majority of its pilots in simulators and is committed to extending coordinated crew training to the medical personnel riding in back.
“We’ve probably changed more in the last two years than in the last 20 as far as training goes,” said Air Methods chief pilot Raj Helweg, who added that between 85 to 90 percent of the company’s 1,300 pilots now receive initial and recurrent simulator training, including in Level D simulators, at FlightSafety International’s Denver learning center for the Airbus Helicopters models AS350, EC130, and EC135 and the Bell 407.
Helweg said that company pilots also train in FlightSafety’s EC145 simulator in Shreveport, Louisiana, and in FlightSafety fixed-wing simulators for the Pilatus PC-12 and Beechcraft King Air in Wichita, Long Beach, and Dallas. About 10 percent of the company’s 320 bases operate fixed-wing aircraft. Altogether, Air Methods operates 20 different aircraft types, Helweg said, but the majority of rotorcraft fall into the four models with associated simulators in Denver.
All of the simulators are currently dry leased, with company instructors and check airmen providing training and checking. Helweg said Air Methods recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the FAA to establish an aircrew designated examiner (ADE) program, the first of its kind for a Part 135 helicopter operator. “That will allow us to do ATP checkrides for our pilots in the platforms they are flying on a regular basis," he said. "Right now we have two FAA ASIs [aviation safety inspectors] assigned to the training facility in Denver. We train up an FAA inspector to be a line pilot, training captain, or check airman in our airframe with our training curriculum. They will observe training and help with curriculum development. It is efficient for the FAA and for us."
While Helweg said the bias toward single-engine platforms remains throughout the industry, there is still a strong demand for twin-engine, single-pilot IFR service, especially among the hospital-based programs and select community-based programs. “It has to do with regional needs. It wouldn’t do us any good to have single-pilot IFR in Casper, Wyoming where icing is a big issue, but it makes perfect sense in Seattle.”
For both VFR and IFR operations, simulation training is invaluable, he said. “We’re always trying to reduce risks. Today, the aircraft, engines, and avionics are more dependable. So the last step is the pilot. If we can set them up for success with better and more comprehensive training, then I believe it can’t help but reduce the mistakes that are happening. Ninety percent of what happens out there is within our control. We’re not victims of circumstance too often.”
Helweg said the two main benefits of helicopter simulator training are building confidence and muscle memory. “We can take pilots to the edge of their mistakes and repeat it over and over again and ingrain the muscle memory so that when faced with that situation the reaction is automatic.
"We can replicate scenes, airports, and their local environments. We can do en route to a scene, a scene to another hospital, a drop-off location, and then back to their home location and then introduce emergencies over major metropolitan areas.” This, he said, hones pilots' decision-making skills. “It’s a learning environment so they can focus on decisions in a more confident way. Developing that confidence really helps their decision making. They’ve actually recovered from something that they couldn’t get in the aircraft.”
Helweg said the company has had a bit of learning curve, converting from in-aircraft to simulator training. “We are dealing with pilots who in many cases have been training solely in aircraft for 20 years and we took all their visibility away from them. There’s a learning curve with that and we had to adjust how we trained. Right now we’re in the walking part of 'crawl, walk, run.'”
Nevertheless, he sees a time in the future when the medical crew will be incorporated into the mix to provide for an added level of safety. “We’re looking at that, and it’s going to be a very important part of training. At our partnership conference this year I had our assistant chief pilots take videos of various emergency procedures in the simulator and show them at the conference, things like inadvertent entry into IMC and autorotations on departure. They got to see how fast that happens, what happens to the instrument displays, and how fast you descend. It was really eye-opening to the point they asked to see more videos. But we deal with 3,000 medical crew members, and bringing them all through Denver would be difficult.” However, Helweg said Air Methods is looking at other ways, including web-based total crew training, to accomplish the objective.
Helweg said Air Methods’s new owner, American Securities, which bought the company for $2.5 billion last year, understands and supports the need to invest in modern training techniques and technology. “Everyone, including our new CEO Steve Gorman, who used to work at Delta Air Lines, is supportive,” he said. “We can only get better.”