Narrative:

I put my risk [assessment] in and went about preparing for flight; I went up to the aircraft; did my walk around; came in to the cockpit; the ipad dinged like it does with every flight when occ (operations control center) approves it. I looked quickly at the screen and with the glare thought it was approved; it turned out occ had not approved the mission but pinged me back to discuss the weather front to my west. I was aware of the front but in the time I had gone up to the helipad it had made a significant update on radar and moved closer. I took off with what I thought was an approved brief instead it was a call from occ. I let dispatch know I was landing assured and they said call from occ. When I did we discussed that the tone for approval and every notification is the same and the it department was working on a change so it would be different. Flight was completed with no problems.I discussed it with the occ personnel and a change to the approval ding on the ipad and other notifications is already in the works. Additionally I will discuss this with my base pilots and at the upcoming safety meeting to help make other pilots aware of the possible results of submitting a risk and specifically looking and ensuring the mission is approved not call occ.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An EMS helicopter pilot reported hearing an iPad notification sound which he thought indicated Dispatch's mission approval after his risk assessment. In fact; Dispatch wanted to discuss weather. A distinctive Dispatch approval notification 'ding' was discussed as a solution.

Narrative: I put my risk [assessment] in and went about preparing for flight; I went up to the aircraft; did my walk around; came in to the cockpit; the iPad dinged like it does with every flight when OCC (Operations Control Center) approves it. I looked quickly at the screen and with the glare thought it was approved; it turned out OCC had not approved the mission but pinged me back to discuss the weather front to my west. I was aware of the front but in the time I had gone up to the helipad it had made a significant update on radar and moved closer. I took off with what I thought was an approved brief instead it was a call from OCC. I let dispatch know I was landing assured and they said call from OCC. When I did we discussed that the tone for approval and every notification is the same and the IT department was working on a change so it would be different. Flight was completed with no problems.I discussed it with the OCC personnel and a change to the approval ding on the IPad and other notifications is already in the works. Additionally I will discuss this with my base pilots and at the upcoming safety meeting to help make other pilots aware of the possible results of submitting a risk and specifically looking and ensuring the mission is approved not call OCC.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.