Over the last six years, the North American aeromedical transport industry, particularly its helicopter EMS community, has become increasingly concerned about an accident rate it (and others) sees as excessive. Attention has focused on night flights and operations in reduced visibility, both of which contribute significantly to the number of mishaps. There is growing interest in wider use of technologies to enhance and amplify the visual capabilities of pilots. Night-vision goggles (NVGs) have garnered most of the attention in safety studies and operator preference, but infrared (IR) sensing is gaining a constituency.
Chuck Crompton, senior manager of marketing and dealer relations for Max-Viz, which markets enhanced vision systems (EVS) that derive their images from uncooled IR sensors, asserts that there is a growing sentiment in the EMS community that the best way to improve the safety of night helicopter operations while achieving higher mission completion rates is by combining the use of NVG and infrared EVS. He noted that years of experience by the military have proved the advantages of using both NVGs and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensors.
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