Progress is being made toward the goal of rotorcraft taking their place in the national transportation infrastructure, according to presenters at January’s American Helicopter Society (AHS) infrastructure convention in Carmel, Calif. The most significant announcement was a congressional requirement in the 2004 federal appropriations bill for the FAA to prepare a document–a technology road map–to define how the U.S. helicopter industry can achieve five key goals.
The administration was given 180 days, until June 9, to complete this road map in association with NASA. AHS executive director Rhett Flater said the fact that the FAA, rather than NASA, was given the responsibility illustrates some congressional concern over the space agency’s commitment to rotary-wing research and development. (NASA infamously reduced to zero its funding for helicopter research in 2001.) “The five are what I would call ‘stretch’ goals in that, given the timescale available to us, they may not all be achievable, but they will certainly point us in the direction we wish to go,” Flater said.
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