This paper describes an efficient and robust optimization method for helicopter rotor airfoil design in forward flight. Navier-Stokes analysis was employed to compute the dynamic response of an airfoil, which simulates the unsteady rotor flow-field in forward flight. The optimization system consists of two categories; Response Surface Method to construct the response surface model based on D-optimal 3-level factorial design, and Genetic Algorithm to obtain the optimum solution of a defined objective function including penalty terms of constraints. The influence of design variables and their interactions on the aerodynamic performance was examined through the optimization process