The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Has anyone ever wondered why you see helicopter pilots wearing Crash Helmets but never see a Cessna Pilot with a helmet ?

regards

You can bet if you routinely landed your Cessna on roads with wires and other small unapproved locations and you spent most of your time under 800 ft with birds that easily come through the windshield, you'd wear a helmet to. We also wear nomex suits to give us some protection from a fire.

The latest threat is lazers requiring expensive shield protection and of course birds will be nothing compared to the threat of drones, which we'd already had to deal with BEFORE they were legal.

And one of the biggest safety devices developed since the we started flying helicopters at night is NVGs. And for the foreseeable future, they are mounted to a helmet.

MoonlightVFR wrote:Has anyone ever wondered why you see helicopter pilots wearing Crash Helmets but never see a Cessna Pilot with a helmet ?

regards

I have known pilots who have regularly worn flight helmets while flying their Cessna's, even a 152. Flying Hughes 500 D's in the Alaska range when we were flying geologists all over creation with three people in the front of the bird we would not wear our helmets because every time someone moved their head we would knock our heads together. It became like the three stooges.

As an air safety investigator, i recommend we all wear helmets, flight suits, and at a minimum a three point harness!...4 or 5 point preferred...

...and ejection seats if you're in something GREEN/slow enough to eject safely.

I had to wear a crash helmet flying the B-47. If I had to wear one in a C-170, I'd have quit flying.

I have a friend that used to be a sky diver and he wears a parachute flying his C-182.

I'm reminded of the Pippy Longstockings story where she "puts a bucket over her head as a helmet. It covers her eyes. She proceeds to trip over something and says it's a good thing she was wearing the bucket or she'd have hurt herself — to which Tommy and Annika comment that if she hadn't been wearing the bucket she wouldn't have tripped in the first place."

In a former life I flew Helio Couriers in Papua, Indonesia for JAARS. Our main base was Sentani. Blueldr knows it as Hollandia. The other large mission aviation outfit in Sentani is MAF. During the late '80s MAF had several accidents in Papua, some fatal. JAARS safety record was significantly better. Another difference between the two organizations was that MAF required their pilots to wear helmets. For JAARS helmets were optional; only a couple of guys wore them. In 2011 Paul, a pilot I worked with in the late '80s, was killed in a tragic accident, only the second fatal accident for JAARS in over 60 years. Paul always wore a helmet.

Mike, an A&P classmate of mine, was a top IAC pilot in the late '80s. He was decapitated by a wire while cropdusting. The helmet he wore didn't help.

Is it possible that in trying to be safer by wearing helmets that pilots unwittingly lower their safety margin? Thinking that since one has a helmet on one can take on increased risk safely. It's called the Peltzman Effect. It's "a very deviant, over-the-top example of that, in which people respond so strongly to the incentives, that they actually end up undoing the benefit that the safety device was supposed to have in the first place." Read or listen to this thought-provoking article on Freakonomics.

Two other reasons for not wearing a helmet are fatigue and the increased risk of spinal/neck injury in an accident. When I was in training for JAARS I asked George, the Director of Safety, about the merits of wearing a helmet. He was of the opinion that when working in the sweltering tropics a crash helmet makes one more tired. A 5 lb. helmet becomes 40 lbs. in a 8 G crash. When the torso is all strapped in that makes for instant neck elongation. George suggested, if one were to wear a helmet, it should be a bicycle helmet -- light and ventilated.

This sounds like the old arguments that wearing helmets on a motorcycle reduce situational awareness and seat belts can trap you in a burning car.

We should be wearing them when we walk too.

If anyone feels serious enough about wearing helmets in their C-170 when flying, there certainly is no law restricting their use.

It's kind of like my buddy and his parachute in his C-182. People just think it's rather strange when they see it.

I don't wear a helmet when I fly helicopters, and I don't wear one when I fly airplanes. However, if I flew external load in helicopters, or ag work in airplanes, I probably would. It's the mission, not the aircraft.

DEM

I only get to see the worse case scenarios, and I see it all the time...but I agree its certainly mission specific and up to each pilot to make that decision on his/her own as to the helmet...the restraints; however, are harder to make a case for not using them.

rupertjl wrote:I only get to see the worse case scenarios, and I see it all the time...but I agree its certainly mission specific and up to each pilot to make that decision on his/her own as to the helmet...the restraints; however, are harder to make a case for not using them.

For as much noise as folks make about the seat rail AD and the efforts Cessna makes to install the secondary stop for FREE,..
I wish Cessna (and other manufacturers) would offer similar for shoulder harnesses.

It'd be cheaper than the secondary stops they are installing for free and would save a lot more people.

It all depends on what problem you're trying to solve. Cessna is trying to solve an expensive legal problem caused by poor seat/rail design. I guess injuries caused by lack of proper seat restraints don't generate the same lawsuits. There's no obvious design flaw, just the personal choice of the owner.

Same goes with wearing a helmet while flying. How many (properly belted) people suffer head injuries in an accident? Is the tradeoff worth the discomfort of a helmet? I used to work with a guy who drove to work on a busy mountain highway with a high accident rate. He wore a rock climbing helmet, which bothered me because it made me wonder if I too casually dismissed risk. Or maybe that guy shouldn't have been driving a VW Rabbit!

DaveF wrote:It all depends on what problem you're trying to solve. Cessna is trying to solve an expensive legal problem caused by poor seat/rail design. I guess injuries caused by lack of proper seat restraints don't generate the same lawsuits. There's no obvious design flaw, just the personal choice of the owner.

Yeah, I was glossing over the fact that Cessna is only doing things due to legal concerns.