The speaker asserts that the medical-helicopter industry’s regulations are ‘supposedly more stringent’ than other flight industries, suggesting that they are superior to other branches. This statement commits a common fallacy in logic known as an appeal to authority. While it is true that medical-helicopter pilots do receive significantly greater training than do pilots of commercial airliners, it still does not justify the assumption that the regulations are enough to prevent accidents. First of all, what is considered ‘tighter’ or ‘more stringent’ training? Is it more training hours or additional training hours? The speaker may be referring to the number of hours of professional training that a pilot is required to have, but this would hardly be sufficient to prevent accidents. While pilots of commercial airliners must complete roughly 1,000 hours of flight training, medical-helicopter pilots must complete at least 3,000 hours of flight training. However, this does not account for the fact that medical-helicopter pilots must also complete a 12-week-long clinical internship at a medical facility. The medical-helicopter industry calls this internship the ‘all-expenses-paid’ ‘Hospital Rotation Program’

During this internship, medical-helicopter pilots fly with doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to remote lands where they teach patients critical medical procedures. Medical-helicopter pilots can thus assist in the medical treatment of patients who would otherwise not have access to advanced medicine. In addition, medical-helicopter pilots are often required to fly in areas where no other aircraft can fly, such as over mountains, or through valleys. If a medical-helicopter pilot is not trained to fly in these conditions, he will undoubtedly crash

Additionally, medical-helicopters require state-of-the-art medical equipment. For example, the helicopters are equipped with electronic flight instrumentation (EFIS) which displays many flight parameters such as altitude, ground speed, airspeed, and heading. These instruments improve a pilot’s situational awareness and allow him to make quick and accurate decisions. However, many medical-helicopters are equipped with outdated EFIS which display only basic flight data such as altitude, speed, and heading. These instruments are insufficient for flight in remote areas where pilots must keep an eye out for weather conditions, terrain, and other aircraft. Such outdated equipment does not pose a safety threat for pilots of commercial airliners, but for pilots of medical helicopters it is a serious risk

The speaker’s reliance on ‘statistics’ to support his argument is cause for concern. Statistics are data that are collected and displayed in a manner that allows them to be manipulated in order to appear to be supporting any argument. However, statistics are not infallible. For example, statistics can be skewed, or they can be based on incomplete data. In this case, statistics may be flawed because medical-helicopter accidents are not reported. Medical-helicopter accidents do occur, but they are rarely reported because the stories are usually buried beneath dozens of pages of news

The speaker’s assertion that ‘statistics reveal that the rate of medical-helicopter accidents is much higher than the rate of accidents for nonmedical helicopters or commercial airliners’ is misleading. The speaker implies that statistics demonstrate that medical-helicopter accidents are more frequent than accidents involving commercial airliners, when in reality the opposite is true. Medical-helicopter accidents occur more frequently than accidents involving commercial airliners, but commercial airliners experience far more accidents than medical-helicopters, even including accidents in which medical helicopters play a part. According to the Aviation Safety Network, in 2016 there were 34 medical-helicopter accidents, resulting in 23 fatalities. In comparison, there were 6,587 fatal accidents involving commercial airliners in the same year. The deaths caused by medical-helicopter accidents constitute approximately 0.0003% of the total deaths that occurred in commercial airliner accidents in 2016. Therefore, the speaker’s assertion is false

The speaker’s final assertion that ‘the medical-helicopter industry supposedly has more stringent guidelines for training pilots and maintaining equipment than do most other airline industries’ is also flawed. It is true that medical-helicopter pilots receive greater training hours than pilots of commercial airliners, but this does not justify the assumption that the regulations are sufficient to prevent accidents. First, as discussed earlier, medical-helicopter pilots must complete a 12-week-long internship in a medical setting. However, it is a common misconception that pilots of commercial airliners receive less training than pilots of medical helicopters. In reality, commercial airliner pilots receive the same amount of training as medical helicopter pilots, which amounts to roughly 3,000 hours

Second, medical-helicopter pilots must undergo additional training beyond their basic flight training, such as training in medical emergencies. However, medical-helicopter pilots are not required to undergo the same rigorous testing as pilots of commercial airliners. For example, medical-helicopter pilots are not required to undergo the Commercial Pilot’s License written exam