International Co-operation on Helicopter Airworthiness Requirements

Extract

I have been asked to talk today about international co-operation with respect to helicopter airworthiness regulations. If I confined my talk to this subject only it would be very brief for, to my knowledge, this co-operation is at the present time very limited, if not non-existent.

The airworthiness committee of the ICAO which is the officially appointed organisation for international co-operation does not often deal with helicopter problems. As to the military, except for a number of points of a very limited scope (such as location of the cargo sling control on the cyclic stick) they have never really approached important problems specific to the helicopter from an international stand-point. The trend they are following today is rather to go by the civil regulations in force in their respective countries and there is an increasing tendency in the various manufacturing countries to consider conformity to civil regulations as the prime requirement to be met for the development of a prototype intended for military usage, except of course for a number of specific points related to battlefield applications which impose requirements different from those to be met for civil applications.