Throughout March and April the US media has been focused on covering an invisible and deadly killer that claims its victims behind closed doors and has forced the public (and indeed many of the journalists) to stay at home. In late May this all changed with the killing of George Floyd in the streets of Minneapolis. Anger spilled onto the streets of American cities and beyond in the form of large scale protests. The journalists also took to the streets, dodging rubber bullets, tear gas and batons in the process, and they took to the skies.
Data up to and including June 14, 2020
Examining daily rotorcraft data, US news media flights occurred in a volume not seen in recent years, the only comparable event being the climate protests of Friday 20th September 2019 (highlighted in orange above). There has not been another event in the last three years that has seen such a volume of flights during the weekends and throughout a three week period. In the last three weeks (25th May - 14th June) we have seen a 32% increase in news media rotorcraft activity vs the three weeks prior.
The ‘news helicopter’ is a concept more familiar to rural British observers from US films and would be a rare sight in the sky for most. In North America nearly a hundred rotorcraft are employed for news media purposes and 78 have been observed in the data as active in recent years. Our analysis of both public and private Mode-S transponder data show that since mid 2017 nearly 60,000 flights have been recorded from these aircraft.
This activity is focused on a relatively small number of states. Three states account for more than a third of overall activity: Florida (home to Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa and Orlando) accounts for the largest share of North American activity at 17%, followed by Pennsylvania (where Philadelphia is the largest city) at 10% and Georgia at 9%. Georgia has Atlanta as its major population centre but is also home to Augusta Golf Course - sadly the buzz of helicopters was absent from Augusta this spring as the Masters Tournament was cancelled due to the corona-virus outbreak.
In Florida the Robinson R44 was the most-used aircraft type over this period, followed closely by the Bell 407. This contrasts with Pennsylvania where the Bell 206 and Airbus 125 dominate news media work. In Georgia, circa four fifths of recorded news media flights in Georgia were performed with Bell 206s.
Why aren’t drones used instead of helicopters for this work? Whilst they would clearly offer benefits in terms of cost, FAA restrictions on drone usage remain tight, including prohibiting flying above people and prohibiting flying beyond the line of sight of the operator. Furthermore, the payload capacity of helicopters remains vastly superior to an industrial quadcopter.
This segment of the rotorcraft industry is perhaps not the most glamorous, with average aircraft age now above 23 years. However last week it was announced that the French government will support Airbus with funding for a low emission hybrid (and, in the longer term, potentially hydrogen-fuelled) replacement for the H125 which has now been in operation for some 45 years. Despite the emergence of drone technology, helicopters remain a key tool for the news industry and the data shows well the correlation of activity with major news events.
The world is changing very fast and while much of what we have seen in 2020 has been distressing for us all, we very much hope that society will ultimately change for the better. We wish all of our readers the very best for the future and for our part will continue to share our observations on how change is affecting the rotorcraft business.
Steve Robertson, Director
Air & Sea Analytics