#186 Are you using a Helicopter Pilot Flight Risk Assessment Matrix?

Hey, welcome to day 186 Coffee with Kenny. This is a good one. And I haven't talked about this in coffee with Kenny at all. And I don't think we have this specifically in our online ground school. I am Kenny Keller, creator helicopter online ground school. We've been online seven years. We have four courses, private commercial, CFI and instrument courses online, all available for FAA wings credit. We prepare you for the oral test to flight test and yes, we have written test practice as well. And we have a 24 test flight for our training and we have a 30 day money back, no hassle guarantee. So today I want to talk about risk assessment and this is a great question that popped up on YouTube I think or somewhere. And the question was, hey Kenny, you haven't really talked about risk assessment during the coffee with Kitty videos. I thought, yeah, great, this is a GWA gwait. This is a gwait question. I really didn't hear much like about a risk assessment or risk assessment matrix until I got flying in ems. But this is a great topic I think for all of us. Whether you're brand new student pilot all the way through, working as a commercial pilot. And of course you have like the I am safe checklist, right? And you learn all that basic private pilot knowledge. I am safe. So you're taught in basic private pilot training regardless of what aircraft you're going for. The I'm safe checklist and you know, the hazardous attitudes. There's all those things that we learn as a basic private pilot and those are all great and fine and dandy. I got introduced to risk assessment flying EMS and this is something that does make me wonder, shouldn't this be intertwined now more into kind of a private pilot training or a rental pilot or just the private pilot everyday kind of thing. And maybe some of you flight schools out there have it now and maybe some of you private pilots flying for fun, maybe you use something like this. And I would love to hear more about it down below. And I'm referenced in an FAA publication right here. I'll put the link down below. That's really. It's written for helicopter EMS because of the high rate of helicopter accidents in the EMS field. But you know what, there's other dangerous helicopter fields as well. AG spraying. The other day somebody mentioned helilogging because I said EMS pilot was the most dangerous. And somebody said, well isn't helilogging the most dangerous? Let's just agree that there are some really dangerous helicopter jobs out there, some much more than others. So again, if there's more of this risk assessment matrix is being used other than ems, I'd love to hear about it. So for those of you that don't know what it is, I'm not going to sit here and read a bunch of stuff to you because you can look this up online. Again, I'll put the link down below. But when you get looking at it, it really makes a lot of sense and it's all the things that we know and we're trained to be looking out for. But just to give you an example, without reading word for word, here's an example of an assessment chart. And this stuff is really pretty important. And they assign a number to each of these things. So experience is less than two years is plus 10. Experience two to three years is a plus five. Four to five years plus two. Okay, so this written by the Department of Transportation for the faa. Here's what they're saying, right? So this, you could take this experience and I think you could pretty much use it across the board, right? I think that it's very feasible that we could be using something this in our daily flying. The next is weather. Less than 3,000 in less than 5 statute miles is a plus 5. Most of us that are experienced can agree that you could get into trouble in this situation. Night during any portion of any flight is an automatic plus five. Okay? Means the risk factor goes up at night five. No matter what, no matter anything else that's going on, you're getting a five. If it's at night, non local plus four. Early morning flight between 2:00am and 5:00am plus one. Okay, so then you total up those numbers and this here says a total of 20 or higher requires greater operational control. Operational control is when you're flying ems, they have what's called operational control. Each morning you go in, you do your risk assessment and your pre flight, you get everything ready to go for the day and you pick your risk assessment number for the day. When you call into your dispatch or log in to do it online, or however you do it at your place of employment, you give them your risk factor for every ship that you work. Okay? Not really a bad idea. And you know, as EMS pilots or any kind of pilot, we gripe and complain when there's someone watching over us, right? Well, even though we gripe and complain about it, if you have somebody watching over you, you're less likely to do stupid stuff, right? If you're on your own weekend warrior and you have access to a helicopter and there is Nobody around, and you have access to the keys and you're authorized to fly it. That's one thing when you have people to answer to, people watching over you, you know, operational control to check in, it's different. And think about this as a private pilot. You might have 70 hours, couple hundred hours, 500 hours, and you can just climb that aircraft and go do pretty much what you want to do. If you have access to one, whether you're a private owner or you're flying a buddies or the flight school leaves you the keys and nobody's around, it is tempting to go out and do some things that you wouldn't. I don't know. Well, I can get by with it. I can do this. I've done it before. So that is really good. I'm going to flip the page because there's some other. Goes further into examples, a static risk factor. And I want to read a few of these to you just so you get the idea. Less than six months on current job is a plus one. Less than one year in EMS is a plus one. Less than 200 hours in type is a plus one. Greater than five hours. Greater than 500 hours in type is a minus one. Right. So they're giving you credit for your experience. Last flight, greater than 30 days, plus one. And the list goes on, you know, goes on. And it even says, you know, this is a guideline. And that in the, in the reading I did before clicking the record button, you know, it says this is a guideline and any specific operator needs to go in and work their risk assessment to their specific operation. Okay, so I'm just giving you an idea of what a risk assessment looks like. And I haven't looked at one of these in a while since I flew ems. And that's why I enjoyed the question when I read it. And I thought, you know, I haven't brought that up. And usually I think about these things, you know, sometimes in the morning I just get an idea and I do it. Sometimes I think about them, you know, the day before or the night before. And a lot of times when I wake up in the morning, I know what I'm going to do. I even actually kind of dream about it a lot of the times. Right. And this sounds funny, but, you know, I dreamed about the RA factor last night, so. And I could go on down. You know, you have dynamic risk factors. There is a ton of good information for anyone that is interested in flying or is flying. Even though this is developed for EMS operator, I am sure there's A ton of stuff out there and online and I'd love to hear about it if your company's using something, if you've used your company or your flight school is using something that you specifically developed or if you're using something that you found online. What I did this morning was I just did a quick Google search specific to helicopter and I think I searched for like helicopter risk assessment tool. And there was a couple that came up right off the bat, PDFs and the one was not a government, was not a FAA publication. So I always choose to use FAA publications. Right. Regardless if people want to argue with the FAA or not. The FAA governs this. Okay. It's just like the arguments over selling with power in Vortex Ring state. You know, depending on the country, people argue back and forth what's what. Right. Well, in the US we're governed by the faa, so we go by FAA standards. So on all my training, I try to always reference an FAA publications and I'll get people that want to battle me and I'm just like, hey, you know what? I'm a certified flight instructor, certified by the faa and the people I'm training are going to be certified to FAA standards. So that's why I use. We'll always choose an FAA publication first, sometimes dry or boring as they may be. And I'm just making fun. I mean the FAA has so many good resources out there. And if you haven't been to faa.gov, you should go there. I was quite disappointed in the last airport I was at that went down one day to I was all excited about our FAA wings program and went down to tell the airport manager, he's like, FAA wings? What's that? And I'm like, you're a pilot, right? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay. Do you ever go to the FAA website, faa.gov why would I do that? Maybe because you're an airport manager. Might be a good idea that you occasionally go to the FAA website. Just saying blast from the past, right? That's why I always use FAA publications. So I'm going to highly recommend that you check out this or any other tool. And I would love to hear down. Are you using anything like this at your flight school in your commercial operation? Ag spraying. 135 charter tours. You know, my experience in 20 years is limited to what most of you know, I've done. I've been training for 20 years, but off and on I've done 135 charter. I've flown EMS. There's a lot of jobs out there I haven't experienced. Right. There's a lot of areas of helicopter flying that I have not flown, flown in nor do I have a lot of experience with. So for my benefit to relay to others as I tell these stories and for our viewers that are tuning in every day or people that come in brand new, go down below and put in the comment sections. If you take the time, I'd really appreciate it, like to hear what you're doing out there. And I'm really interested in training. Right. Because in flight schools it doesn't seem to be real common to be talking about a risk assessment tool. And I think it's actually probably a pretty good idea. What do you think? Alright, I'm gonna wrap it up. Please go below and there's a little icon down below and click like when I go premiere these, I go give us a thumbs up and they give it a thumbs up in the chat box, which is great. Thank you, thank you for everybody that tunes in every day but helps us even more with our YouTube ranking. If you go below the video and click that like button and if you don't like the video there's a dislike button. Make sure you click that twice because that really helps us out. Subscribe to the channel. When you subscribe you'll see a little bell down below. So subscribe and click that bell. That way you'll be notified of these daily videos that come out every day. I did mention I'm Kenny Keller, creator, helicopter, airline, ground school and hopefully have a little treat coming in tonight. Shouldn't mention it because I'll probably jinx it but Travis Gregg is in the area in Indiana and he's working with a guy, young man getting ready to go start a ZMS career and they want to come up and sit and chit chat a little bit and I hope they come, I hope they can make it. They're gonna let me know yet today if they do, we'll shoot a video tonight. There'll be coffee with Kenny for tomorrow or maybe they'll come tomorrow morning. But I'd love to see Travis. It's a great story. Travis is on the COVID of my book Helicopter Checkride. That's Travis right there. That's when I visited Travis down in Tennessee mountains and Travis flying tours. And when he called me today, you know, it comes up, I'm like, hey, it's Travis, right? So I answer the phone, he tells him a story. Yeah, he's got this friend he's working With Ferdinand, I'm like, ferdinand? He's one of my first instructors and one of my best friends. And he goes, yes, we know. And anyway, Ferdinand flies EMS is one of my first instructors, great personal friend. So they got in cahoots with Ferdinand. And anyway, as we were chatting on the phone, he goes, yeah, remember when I bought your DVs? I'm like, are you kidding? You know, for those tuning in to Daily, Daily, Daily, Daily Daily videos, I've been talking about, you know, my broke dick days and, you know, beat down, worthless, beating myself up. When I started ground school, and this would have been probably in 2012, I'm out in Ohio trying to make some money flying with some guys, and they were jacking me around, and I'm sitting at a gas station waiting to hear what time I'm supposed to meet these guys at the airport. And I'm like, God, this sucks. You know, here I am broke, and I started ground school, and, you know, any business is hard to get off the ground, right? And I get this call from Travis, and he's like, hey, man, I want your DVDs. And quickly, in my mind, oh, man, I'm out, right? I don't have any DVDs. And he's like, well, you know, I'll pay you right now. You know, I'm like, I don't even have a button for DVDs. He's like, well, I'll send you the money however you need it. I want your DVDs, man. So I'm like, I abandoned the thing I was doing in Ohio because I was tired of jacking around waiting on these guys. And I'm like, hey, here's a young man who wants my training. And I'm sitting around waiting on somebody else that's not answering me what time we're going to fly. I said, sorry, guys. Boom. I'm going back to Indiana. Hauled ass home. Four and a half hours back home. Burned Travis, I said, to DVDs. He sent me the money and I shipped him off. And we were laughing about that today. Travis is the one that told me, you know, when he first called me and said he wanted my DVDs because he didn't have good Internet where he lived, right? And he says, yeah, I met this guy Jim at Sevier County Choppers, and he's going to take me off the street to double I in six months and give me a job. And I thought, yeah, right. Okay, well, I can say that now because I'm friends with those guys down there, and I Refer them all the time. It's a great story because Travis did it. You know, I doubted it when they said, oh, you know. Or he said, I'll be a double I in six months and. And they're gonna give me a job and then they'll get me flying a Jet Ranger. See that picture right there? He did it. He studied his butt off. Calls me up later, and we communicate. I think when he was going through the training a few times asked me some questions about something, and next thing I know, I'm getting an email or a phone call from Travis. He's like, dude, I'm a double I and I'm working. And I'm like, what? And then the next thing you know, because he. They get them off to double I in six months and then start them flying training in the R22 and R44, get them flying some tours, and then they get a little time under the belt, they move to the Jet Ranger. I went to Tennessee and met Travis a few years ago. 2014, I believe, the year I put this book out. And I went up with Travis, went flying with this young man. Since then, Kyle Parrish has done it. And I've highlighted Travis and Kyle both in my videos. Kyle, we just did a video about two or three weeks ago. Kyle did the same thing as Travis, and now he's flying tours in New York City. New York City. How freaking cool is that? So I tell the story and I'll just probably jinxed it. They probably won't be able to make it for some reason or another. But hopefully Travis is going to make it and we'll have a great interview for you. Because I said, well, I'll help you guys, but you know, I'm going to suck you into a coffee with Kenny video. And Travis is like, well, I figured we probably would, right? So hopefully we got that coming up for you. Helicopter checkride. You can go down below. I got a link down below. We send these books to you. You just pay shipping and handling. I put that out in 2014 and I'm very proud of this book. Amazon bestseller in 12 hours. I launched it at night, started watching the sales go through, and when I woke up in the morning, it was Amazon number one bestseller. About fell out of the bed when I opened up my tablet and looked at it. And then we also got top 10 checkride tips right here. I co authored this with Taz Chrisman, 2018 Flight Instructor of the year. People are almost daily emailing me, hey, how do I get ahold of Taz Taz works at Air Work Las Vegas. That's where you find him. Airplane instructor, helicopter instructor. If you're looking for airplane or helicopter training in the Las Vegas area, you need to contact Air Work Las Vegas. That's where you'll find Taz. You can also find Taz on Facebook and Instagram. We did this together. I launched this book. Taz was at Oshkosh getting his award for 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year. I'm home in my pajamas launching this book. And we hit Amazon number one best seller as Taz Ashkosh. Oshkosh getting his award. How freaking cool is that? And I was going to go to Oshkosh and meet and hang out with Taz, and I got down to the end of the book ready to launch it, and I was like, man, I want to go, but I want to get this book launched. And I was literally at home in my pajamas at the kitchen table launching this book. And we hit Amazon number one bestseller. And I had to call Taz up. You know, he's at Oshkosh getting his award. And I come up. I went out in my pontoon, went for a ride and called him up. I'm like, guess what? Amazon number one best selling author, you know, you're out there getting your award for 2018 flight instructor of the year. And our Amazon number one best seller or our book is an Amazon number one bestseller. Top 10 checkride tips. But there's more. There's bonuses in there. Taz went out and talked to examiners in the Las Vegas area and asked them, what are people screwing up right now? You know, what's the main problem when they show up for checkride? What's going on? What's happening, right? What are they messing up? Because we're all human beings and we all very commonly make the same mistakes, right? So that's a bonus in the book. So both of these Amazon number one best sellers. I'm gonna put that link right down below in the description box. Heather that works with us here at Helicopter and Land Ground School, she ships these. And when you order the book, she'll send you a nice email and talk nice and sweet to you and tell you your book orders on the way and she'll help you if there's any kind of problems with address or anything like that. We are currently still shipping them, even internationally for only seven bucks. We're going to have to change that soon. But we ship either book anywhere for $7. And people are asking me, what's the difference well, this is top 10 checkride tips. Just kind of explained that one. That's what Taz and I did together. Helicopter checkride. Everything that we do in our training revolves about the checkride. Because in the end that's what you got to do, right? And then you annually or biannually have to have a flight review. I put a little bit about myself in the first chapter about my struggles and the things I went through to become a pilot. But then there's a whole ton of stuff in here. Training tips, the helicopter, threes, frequently asked questions. So this book isn't just for check rides. This book is an all around kind of all kinds of stuff about helicopters, just a little bit about me, but then a whole bunch of helicopter training stuff that I've. That I've seen over the years and I've developed over the years and it's. And it's pretty freaking awesome. Day 186. This is badass. Still enjoying it every day. So do me a favor for all this hard work we're doing for you and all the free content, subscribe to the channel. Click that bell when you do. And coffee with Kenny is fair game for anything helicopter training related. Careers training Checkrides Private through double I. Anything you want to talk about helicopter related? The finance question keeps coming up. Pilotfinance.com. that's the only place I can think of that just does specific pilot financing. And I don't get paid anything by them. I'd used them years ago. There's just not a lot out there. If you guys know some other financing other than just pilot finance.com, put that down in the box below because that question comes up a lot and people are always looking for it. Best thing to do is save your money. But I understand that's hard to do. I used pilot finance when I was working on my commercial. All right, I'm gonna wrap it up. My daughter says, you go too long, dad. And I go, yeah, I know. So that's day 186. We will see you in day 187. Peace out. Yeah.