Good news. The past July — typically the worst month of the year for helicopter accidents — was the second-safest on record in 30 years, and the overall accident rate for the first six months of the year is trending down. Good work, everyone.

But don't break out the champagne just yet.

The fatal accident rate is showing a mild uptick, jumping from 0.52 per 100,000 flight hours for all of 2015 to 0.54 year to date according to data from the U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST). The FAA is also still pondering what to do about mandating retrofit of crash-resistant fuel systems into legacy helicopters, and too many accidents are still occurring due to basic loss-of-control issues. But these problems are fixable without breaking too much of a sweat.

Those of you up on your ancient history may recall that the FAA gave a hall pass to legacy helicopter designs when it mandated crash-resistant fuel systems and energy-attenuating seating in new production helicopters back in the 1980s and 1990s. After pouring over mounds of accident data, the FAA found most of the current civil fleet flying — including much of the U.S. HEMS fleet — was grandfathered in under the old standards because it is based on designs that predated the rule changes.

The FAA then charged an Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) to form a working group to study the cost implications of mandating a retrofit of the entire U.S. fleet to these new safer standards. That study should be out by next month.

Bringing the seating up to snuff could be complex and costly depending on the airframe involved if it requires changing the load-carrying capacity of the aircraft floor, but engineers are clever and they undoubtedly can devise some sort of solution.

The fuel systems should be a far easier matter. Just look at what Robinson did back in 2014 with the little R22, for example. They offered the bladder for around $16,000, but discounted it to $6,400 in the public interest, and then gave customers an $800 rebate on top of that once the installation was completed. The move cut fuel capacity by a couple of gallons, but it stopped the fires.

Now, Robinson is not a huge company like Textron (parent of Bell) or Airbus, but if they can afford to do this for their customers, so should everyone else.

But how about we prevent the impact and the post-crash fires in the first place? Loss of control continues to be the leading cause of helicopter accidents, including HEMS accidents, and training needs to take this into account.

Upset recognition and recovery training should be recurrent and required for all commercial helicopter pilots. These courses are available now.