There is no national data that would show whether it is more dangerous to fly on an air tour in Hawai'i than in other air tour hubs such as Alaska or the Grand Canyon, but last week's deadly Kaua'i helicopter crash has both industry critics and some tour industry officials saying more must be done to make tour flights safer here.

There is disagreement, however, on exactly what should be done.

Some argue for more strict Federal Aviation Administration oversight over small tour companies, but others allege the FAA in Hawai'i is unwilling or unable to effectively regulate the air tour industry.

Pilot Joe Sulak and three passengers were killed when an A-Star helicopter crashed Thursday afternoon near the Princeville Airport. The crash was the fourth fatal tour helicopter crash on Kaua'i in less than four years, and the second fatal crash for the Heli USA Airways company since 2005.

The pilot radioed that he was having problems with his hydraulics system before the crash.

Mike Danko, a San Mateo, Calif., helicopter pilot and lawyer who has represented victims or survivors in about 10 Hawai'i crashes in the past decade, said that even without hard statistics "you can just tell that the rate of air crashes in Hawai'i is just outrageous."

"There are so many, and so many that are easily preventable, and so many where the facts that surround the accidents are generally very sad because they're so outrageous," he said.

Danko faulted the FAA staff in Hawai'i for what he believes are overly friendly relationships with tour operators that lead to lax oversight.

"The cause in most of these crashes ends up being something that is very preventable, it could only have happened because the FAA oversight is horribly lacking," he said. "It's a very, very bad situation where the operators are not being surveilled. The safety culture is entirely missing."

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor replied that "safety always has been and always will be the FAA's top priority. We have a long history of vigorously overseeing air tour operators in Hawai'i."

"We do comprehensive inspections of air tour operators, and we don't pull punches if violations are found," Gregor said.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently criticized the FAA as failing to properly oversee the Hawai'i air tour industry, and Gregor said a team from the agency arrived at the FAA Honolulu Flight Standards District Office last week to evaluate operations there.

"The goal is to see if we're allocating people correctly or if we should reassign people to different areas, focus more on one thing or another," he said.

HELI USA DISPUTE

Robert Butler, executive director of a tour industry safety organization called Tour Operators Program of Safety, said that while the NTSB and FAA are "very good governmental organizations, they are still subject to politics."

"I don't believe that the political environment right now is conducive to safety," Butler said. "If you look at the funding cutbacks that the FAA is having to endure, that's nationwide."

In Hawai'i, Butler said, the Honolulu Flight Standards District Office "is doing as much as they can. Could the machine be better? Definitely."

The Tour Operators Program of Safety, or TOPS, is made up of mostly large tour operators, and its 11 members together represent about 50 percent of the total air tour capacity in the U.S. The organization has its members audited to monitor their operating practices, and Heli USA was a member of TOPS.

However, Heli USA's membership in TOPS was revoked in June 2006 when the company was "unable to meet some of the program audit requirements put in place at that time," Butler said.

The audits cover management, aircraft equipment, training for pilots, maintenance and ground support, Butler said.

Heli USA president Nigel Turner said his firm passed its last two TOPS audits. He said Heli USA and TOPS parted ways largely over differences in Heli USA's schedule for installing floats on its Kaua'i helicopters. All the firm's helicopters are currently fitted with floats, he said.

"There are a lot of good operators that are not members of TOPS that have excellent safety records," Turner said.

Butler said operators such as TOPS members are going beyond what the FAA is requiring.

"I definitely don't want tourists to feel ... that air tourism in Hawai'i is unsafe, because that's not the case," he said.

However, tourists should "do their homework, and try to find the right operator that provides them with the best answers to the questions they have regarding their own personal safety and security," he said.

STATISTICS UNCLEAR

Air tour operations in the Grand Canyon area racked up a larger number of accidents than were reported in Hawai'i in recent years, but to get a true picture of the safety record in both places would require that the number of accidents be calculated per 100,000 flights, said Preston Myers, president and owner of Safari Aviation, which does business as Safari Helicopter Tours.

Myers said he does not believe the accident rate is higher in Hawai'i than in other areas that have a busy tour-flight industry, but FAA and NTSB officials said they have not compiled that data.

Myers believes the crash on Kaua'i will be found to be the result of a mechanical problem, but he too is critical of the regulation by the FAA. For example, he said the FAA only recently began requiring air tour companies to weigh passengers, which Myers said has been his standard practice for nearly 20 years.

Myers also believes that the FAA requirement that tour flights stay above 1,500 feet in most places in Hawai'i has caused more fatalities because it limits pilots' options in bad weather. At times it makes sense for a pilot to drop below the 1,500-foot level to avoid cloud cover or bad weather, he said.

Helicopter operators, including Myers, also oppose the 1,500-foot restriction because they say it is bad for business. The tourists can't see as much at that height, and Myers argues that the 1,500-foot restriction caused some tour companies to go out of business.

Butler said some of his members in Hawai'i were disappointed that in the last round of rule-making the FAA failed to require that all air tour operators be Part 135 "air carriers" certified by the FAA.

Under Part 135 certification, tour operators would each be assigned a principal operational inspector from the local FAA office, meaning an FAA team would oversee the company's training and operations. The NTSB supported that requirement, Butler said.

However, that rule change was not adopted, which means small companies can continue to operate limited air tours under FAA regulation Part 91, the general operating flight rules that do not impose the same degree of FAA oversight, he said.

Butler said TOPS members' support for the rule change was not meant to impose new regulatory requirements on their smaller competitors.

"It's not a matter of competition. Truly, it's a matter of safety," he said. "When you are responsible to a safety program, and there are outside individuals who are observing and providing input for changes, it is a great asset to an operation."

Enough insurance?

Catherine Ratcliff, 66, heard about Thursday's crash on Kaua'i from her son, who called to tell her about it.

Ratcliff and her husband, Dallas, of West Portsmouth, Ohio, were severely injured on April 18, 2004, when the single-engine tour plane they were in crashed and burned near Miloli'i. Pilot Jelica Matic also was severely injured.

The Ratcliffs had been celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary in Hawai'i with air tours on each of the islands, and went for helicopter flights on Kaua'i, Maui and O'ahu before their tour plane crashed on the Big Island.

The couple ran up medical bills of more than $1.5 million in Honolulu hospitals before they returned home to endure a long recovery from severe burns and other injuries.

They learned that the Island Hoppers tour company that owned the plane had only $100,000 per seat in liability coverage, and $1,000 in medical coverage for the passengers.

Their health insurance company took almost all of the settlement from the liability insurance, and Ratcliff said the couple simply cannot pay their remaining medical bills.

"Nobody will know what little bit of money we got, and what pain we had to suffer and are still suffering," she said.

"They don't tell the people, they just don't tell them of what things might happen when they take these tours," she said. "We never even thought about it, and I think that's how most tourists are.

"They don't think about the danger that they could be putting their lives in."

Danko, who believes his law firm has sued over more Hawai'i helicopter crashes than any other legal team, said some companies don't disclose even recent accidents to potential customers. He cited one company he sued over a fatal crash on Kaua'i that was still claiming a "perfect safety record" on its Web site a year after the crash.

He said tour operators typically don't have a great deal of liability insurance, but their aircraft are insured, which allows some to stay in business after a crash.

"That's one of the common themes from the victims and the families. What happens to the operator as a result of this crash? And the answer to that is, nothing," Danko said.

"People think the FAA is going to shut them down. Wrong. Or the NTSB is going to put them in jail. Wrong. Nothing happens to these people; they just continue to operate."

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.