The Helicopter Association International expects to have its international online database of disaster-relief rotorcraft ready for rollout next month. At press time HAI president Matt Zuccaro told AIN that the association was running a test program and would soon be asking operators to respond with data about their helicopter fleets, including their locations, what they are equipped to do and their availability to respond to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or the Pakistan earthquake.

“We have been meeting with organizations that can deploy these aircraft to find out their needs, and our main role will be to act as a conduit between operator and customer, whether an end-user such as the Red Cross or a relief coordinator such as Air Serv. We will be continually refining and adding data to the repository to make it as accurate as possible.”