Poll: Should TAWs Be Required for Helicopters?
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Insurance Roundtable
After years of soft premiums, the insurance market is turning harder. That means higher rates and insurability issues for aging pilots. Plus, your choice of aircraft can have serious ramifications for the cost and type of insurance coverage you can get—if you can even get the coverage you need. In this long-form video, Aviation Consumer's Larry Anglisano discusses the issues with three insurance professionals.
I have TAWS-B in my 172 as well as Terrain on my iPad via Garmin Pilot. Multi-million dollar helicopters can afford to have TAWS.
John, I’m happy you have TAWS in your 172, but it’s not that simple for helos. They operate completely differently than fixed wing aircraft. The same system you have when installed in a helicopter would be going off almost 100% of the time and therefore useless. Helicopters are operating VFR almost 99% of the time and the pilots are well aware that they are in close proximity to obstructions and terrain. A TAWS system would have not prevented the Kobe crash, which was most likely an inadvertent IMC/ loss of control encounter.
I do a lot of low level flying (<500 feet) for various survey work and simply inhibit TAWS, otherwise it would, as you say, be going off 100% of the time.