Helicopter
Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Instrument
Flight Crew Total 5210
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Aircraft; Company Policy; Procedure
In conducting research in regard to the accuracy of the FAA's Airport Master Record (5010) database system significant discrepancies have been discovered. While auditing four different states for hospital heliports; Ohio; Indiana; Wisconsin and Tennessee; numerous hospital heliports were found to be unaccounted for. Ohio-44; Indiana-36; Wisconsin-42 and Tennessee-38. Given these numbers it is estimated upwards of 2;000 hospital heliports may be unaccounted for in the U.S. The criticality of this is based on the fact that the FAA has provided UAS and Drone operators with the B4UFLY application to alert them when they are in proximity of any airports. Since the B4UFLY application; as does every other aviation database and GPS; pulls its information directly from the FAA Airport Master Record Database; any facility not identified in that system will not appear in the B4UFLY; hence the UAS or Drone pilot would never know these facilities existed and would not know to avoid the area or to alert the hospitals of their operation as required by Part-107. The primary reasons identified for this lack of information are the fact that hospital heliports are qualified as 'private' facilities; even though commercial operations are performed at these locations; and the FAA has never been given any legal jurisdiction or authority over private facilities and cannot enforce compliance. With the continually increasing number of UAS and Drone operations being conducted in the U.S.; the risk exposure for a potential incident continues to climb every day.
An EMS Helicopter pilot reported many hospital heliports are not in the FAA Airport database provided to drone operators to use to avoid the airspace.