Yacht-specific MCA helicopter training introduced
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency has issued the first crew helicopter operations and training syllabus tailored specifically to large yachts, says the Agency.…
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has issued the first crew helicopter operations and training syllabus tailored specifically to large yachts, says the Agency. Although the new guidance has been adapted to enhance relevance to the yacht sector, the MCA emphasises the new standards maintain an equivalence to existing ones from the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation (OPITO).
As outlined in the recent Marine Guidance Notice, MGN 442(M), the operational and training standards particularly refer to Helicopter Landing Officers (HLOs) and Helideck Landing Assistants (HDAs) on vessels complying with the Large Commercial Yacht Code or the Passenger Yacht Code. At present only a handful of yachts are commercially certified for helicopter operations, but the MCA advises that the guidance is also useful for private yachts with helicopter decks, even if not enforceable by law.
The relevant documents, which can be downloaded from the MCA website, are the Large Yacht Helicopter Operations Handbook, the Large Yacht Helicopter Refueling Guide and the Large Yacht Helicopter Safety Training Syllabus.
Initial meetings to draft the documentation started in 2008 but the Helideck Working Group (HWG) did not complete it until October 2011, after six meetings. The MCA worked closely with the UK’s appointed aviation inspection body, the Helideck Certification Authority, which took the lead on assembling the guidance.
The HWG included representation from the Civil Aviation Authority as well as across the superyacht sector, comprising major yacht managers, flag representatives and MYBA, the Professional Yachting Association (PYA) and training schools.
“The MCA did not set out with an agenda to impose; it involved the industry and asked for genuine feedback from the group on operations and training for helicopters on superyachts. There aren’t many helicopters operating commercially from yachts, but this was a good way to improve the practice in the industry,” explains Andy Williams who represented MYBA in the working group.
He says that MYBA will be recommending its privately operated yachts to follow the new regulations as best practice: “There will be some expense in putting people through the courses but the good thing about this is that the MCA has agreed that the courses can be run on board, which keeps costs down and has the advantage of training crews with the equipment and facilities they will be using.
Marine surveyor Richard Williams led the conclusion of the yacht-specific guidance for the MCA. He spoke to SuperyachtNews.com about the new guidance:
“The arrangements on offshore supply vessels or oil platforms are quite different from those on a yacht. A lot of the helicopters used offshore carry 10 or 20 people; on yachts they typically carry four or six at the most.
“The OPITO requires students to pass the ‘dunker’ course, where you are strapped into a rig, submerged in a swimming pool and turned upside down. We felt elements like this aren’t relevant to the yachting industry because the yachts aren’t crewed to deal with helicopters of that size and, realistically, in this sort of situation it is down to the crew of the helicopter to do this and the yacht crew will most likely be launching rescue boats. These are the sorts of elements that will differ in the training relevant to yachts rather than the offshore industry.”
“Landing on a moving vessel is a high-risk operation. However, the crew operating a helicopter to their deck are not travelling in it, so it calls for different training to make the deck safe,” says Helidecks Training Solutions’ David Nelson, a retired naval pilot. The company has provided helicopter training to yachts for four years, mostly to private vessels.
Claude Hamilton, who was the MCA’s chief examiner for five years, represented the PYA in the Helideck Working Group. He remarks that there has been a trend for increasingly larger helicopters being used by owners to land on their superyachts, which has had an impact on the landing crew and the safety of their operations.
“The average helicopter journey involving a yacht is likely to be a short hop to and from the shore, so wearing full immersion suits, as required by the offshore industry, is unlikely to be practical or welcomed by the yacht owner and guests,” says Hamilton. “However, there still needs to be more safety than a couple of deckhands wandering around in shorts and flip flops when the helicopter comes in. A fully trained helideck crew is essential, because if anything goes wrong, it tends to go spectacularly wrong.”
“The key word in this is equivalent,” adds Williams. “The LY2 is a yacht equivalent to wider IMO regulations like SOLAS; in the same respect, we are looking for an equivalent level of safety in yachting as anywhere else on a commercially certificated vessel, while at the same time providing something that is more relevant to the size of the helideck, the number of people, equipment and the frequency of operations.
The various yacht HLO and HDA day courses can be rolled out once the providers have been given relevant accreditation by the MCA, hopefully within the year, explains Williams. These might be taken back to back, though the HLO will be expected to have worked as an assistant and gained experience of helicopters landing on yachts before finishing the course.
The certification needs renewing every two years rather than five, which matches the best practice in the offshore industry.
There is a module that covers helicopter refuelling, which is a very volatile scenario. This only needs to be taken if the crewmember works on a vessel with refuelling facilities, which tends to be just the explorer types.
“We are expecting some training providers to come forward for approval now. We know of several organisations that are likely to step forward into the training arena to provide these courses,” Williams continues.
John Wyborn of Bluewater was also on the HWG. He says that the company is currently reviewing whether to offer the new courses to crew: “We have not decided yet if we will offer the full HLO and HDA courses. I still have my instructors looking at it and deciding the best way to go.
“I have to make a decision, because it is a relatively limited number of yachts that are going to need this from a mandatory point of view. We have had a regular trickle of people asking if we do helicopter courses, and all we have been able to do up to now is to send them to Heli Riviera for training.”
“These might be the sorts of courses that those wishing to work at the top end of the superyacht scale might do to advance their career prospects; some students of the Ship Security Officer, Shipboard Safety Officer and Crisis Management courses do these for that reason. If this proves to be the case, we will certainly be running them,” Wyborn added.
Related links
MCA Profile | MCA Website
MCA Large Yacht Services helicopter page
As outlined in the recent Marine Guidance Notice, MGN 442(M), the operational and training standards particularly refer to Helicopter Landing Officers (HLOs) and Helideck Landing Assistants (HDAs) on vessels complying with the Large Commercial Yacht Code or the Passenger Yacht Code. At present only a handful of yachts are commercially certified for helicopter operations, but the MCA advises that the guidance is also useful for private yachts with helicopter decks, even if not enforceable by law.
The relevant documents, which can be downloaded from the MCA website, are the Large Yacht Helicopter Operations Handbook, the Large Yacht Helicopter Refueling Guide and the Large Yacht Helicopter Safety Training Syllabus.
Initial meetings to draft the documentation started in 2008 but the Helideck Working Group (HWG) did not complete it until October 2011, after six meetings. The MCA worked closely with the UK’s appointed aviation inspection body, the Helideck Certification Authority, which took the lead on assembling the guidance.
The HWG included representation from the Civil Aviation Authority as well as across the superyacht sector, comprising major yacht managers, flag representatives and MYBA, the Professional Yachting Association (PYA) and training schools.
“The MCA did not set out with an agenda to impose; it involved the industry and asked for genuine feedback from the group on operations and training for helicopters on superyachts. There aren’t many helicopters operating commercially from yachts, but this was a good way to improve the practice in the industry,” explains Andy Williams who represented MYBA in the working group.
He says that MYBA will be recommending its privately operated yachts to follow the new regulations as best practice: “There will be some expense in putting people through the courses but the good thing about this is that the MCA has agreed that the courses can be run on board, which keeps costs down and has the advantage of training crews with the equipment and facilities they will be using.
Marine surveyor Richard Williams led the conclusion of the yacht-specific guidance for the MCA. He spoke to SuperyachtNews.com about the new guidance:
“The arrangements on offshore supply vessels or oil platforms are quite different from those on a yacht. A lot of the helicopters used offshore carry 10 or 20 people; on yachts they typically carry four or six at the most.
“The OPITO requires students to pass the ‘dunker’ course, where you are strapped into a rig, submerged in a swimming pool and turned upside down. We felt elements like this aren’t relevant to the yachting industry because the yachts aren’t crewed to deal with helicopters of that size and, realistically, in this sort of situation it is down to the crew of the helicopter to do this and the yacht crew will most likely be launching rescue boats. These are the sorts of elements that will differ in the training relevant to yachts rather than the offshore industry.”
“Landing on a moving vessel is a high-risk operation. However, the crew operating a helicopter to their deck are not travelling in it, so it calls for different training to make the deck safe,” says Helidecks Training Solutions’ David Nelson, a retired naval pilot. The company has provided helicopter training to yachts for four years, mostly to private vessels.
Claude Hamilton, who was the MCA’s chief examiner for five years, represented the PYA in the Helideck Working Group. He remarks that there has been a trend for increasingly larger helicopters being used by owners to land on their superyachts, which has had an impact on the landing crew and the safety of their operations.
“The average helicopter journey involving a yacht is likely to be a short hop to and from the shore, so wearing full immersion suits, as required by the offshore industry, is unlikely to be practical or welcomed by the yacht owner and guests,” says Hamilton. “However, there still needs to be more safety than a couple of deckhands wandering around in shorts and flip flops when the helicopter comes in. A fully trained helideck crew is essential, because if anything goes wrong, it tends to go spectacularly wrong.”
“The key word in this is equivalent,” adds Williams. “The LY2 is a yacht equivalent to wider IMO regulations like SOLAS; in the same respect, we are looking for an equivalent level of safety in yachting as anywhere else on a commercially certificated vessel, while at the same time providing something that is more relevant to the size of the helideck, the number of people, equipment and the frequency of operations.
The various yacht HLO and HDA day courses can be rolled out once the providers have been given relevant accreditation by the MCA, hopefully within the year, explains Williams. These might be taken back to back, though the HLO will be expected to have worked as an assistant and gained experience of helicopters landing on yachts before finishing the course.
The certification needs renewing every two years rather than five, which matches the best practice in the offshore industry.
There is a module that covers helicopter refuelling, which is a very volatile scenario. This only needs to be taken if the crewmember works on a vessel with refuelling facilities, which tends to be just the explorer types.
“We are expecting some training providers to come forward for approval now. We know of several organisations that are likely to step forward into the training arena to provide these courses,” Williams continues.
John Wyborn of Bluewater was also on the HWG. He says that the company is currently reviewing whether to offer the new courses to crew: “We have not decided yet if we will offer the full HLO and HDA courses. I still have my instructors looking at it and deciding the best way to go.
“I have to make a decision, because it is a relatively limited number of yachts that are going to need this from a mandatory point of view. We have had a regular trickle of people asking if we do helicopter courses, and all we have been able to do up to now is to send them to Heli Riviera for training.”
“These might be the sorts of courses that those wishing to work at the top end of the superyacht scale might do to advance their career prospects; some students of the Ship Security Officer, Shipboard Safety Officer and Crisis Management courses do these for that reason. If this proves to be the case, we will certainly be running them,” Wyborn added.
Related links
MCA Profile | MCA Website
MCA Large Yacht Services helicopter page
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