FAA trials weather cameras with air ambulances in Michigan and Mississippi

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that it will trial its weather camera technology with three helicopter air ambulance (HAA) operators based out of hospitals in Michigan and Mississippi.

The technology will be trialled by the operators for over a year to test the benefits of the technology to the aviation and air ambulance industries.

The FAA says that the technology will enable the collection of data in locations not well covered by the nearest automated surface observing system (ASOS) weather monitor.

The data acquired during the trials will be used to develop ‘special operating procedures for better-informed flight operations and efficiencies at air ambulance helicopters and airports … where ASOS does not exist’.

The FAA says that if the weather camera services improve flight operations, ‘the medevac operators and hospitals they serve could experience far fewer flight cancellations due to unknown weather conditions’.

Until this year, the FAA had worked exclusively with state governments to test the weather camera technology and integrate images captured onto a website tailored primarily to pilots of fixed-wing aircraft. By contrast, private operators and helicopter pilots have tended to be overlooked.

Under current regulations, fixed-wing medical flights and HAA flights are allowed to operate only if adequate weather data is available to help pilots make an informed go/no-go decision. However, while fixed-wing flights are typically conducted from airports equipped with weather reporting stations, the accuracy of weather data used for HAA flights varies dramatically in terms of accuracy from location to location.