So how does that work with off-shore fuel requirements? Do you always plan to carry the fuel to return to a land base or only if the platform requires an alternate? Are there times when the weather at the land base just makes it impossible to depart with the fuel requirements and payload?
How it was done – Bass Strait.
It was a VFR operation ostensibly with limits of 350’, clear of cloud, vis 3k. Instrumentation in the single engine Hueys was per normal for IMC, but the only nav aid was a coffee grinder ADF. CASA deemed all the platforms to be within the 50nm arc of home, so weather reports were not required, nor obtained. Trouble was Bass Strait’s notoriously fickle weather, a lesson in micrometeorology, frontal systems that never appeared on a met chart for example. Intermittent fog patches, stratus patches down to the water, both too large to circumnavigate, heavy rain in the mini frontal systems that sent you IMC at 350. Going out you needed to stay low level in order to find the platform, a tap on the shoulder and point by a pax was at times a godsend. Going home if it was a dank day and hand flying IMC was too much of a grind, a climb to 3,000 more than often put you on top, and then a Henshaw approach at home – homing on the bulge in the cloud layer caused by the hot air from the gas plant.Finally twin engine helos took over, with full kit of coupled auto pilots, radar, GPS (had our own LORAN chain at one time prior to GPS) and flown single pilot, as were the Hueys. Before the link below was published the same information was contained in a CASA supplement at the front of the flight manual. With one exception. The supplement required OEI accountability, meaning availability of somewhere to put it down in the event of engine failure. Similarly, the ops manual required a land based alternate at all times if operating offshore. The S-76 required 880’ of runway from 50’ height to a stop in the worse case conditions (no wind, max gross), touchdown being at about 40 kt. 11,700 pounds with shopping trolley size wheels/brakes did take a bit to stop. The link now says private ops, which it was, now no longer require OEI accountability. So much for safety, and a reason the company wants it to remain a private op and not subject to an AOC as I believe CASA tried to make them subject.
Aircraft were frequently required to shut down offshore as home base had clagged. The only out if you found yourself OEI would have been to make a coupled ILS at the company installed ILS at East Sale. Aircraft would flare automatically at 50' and track the localiser maintaining the 50'. Up to you then to put it on the ground. Difficulty in making changes was the operator never had an accident and all failures that did occur all happened in benign circumstances.
https://www.casa.gov.au/file/103646/...token=2CPLdK5q
Commercial operators do it by the book I’m told. They have their own ops manual obviously, also the national requirements of the country in which they work, plus the standards applied by the charterer. The highest of the three is what they apply. Interestingly the Bass Strait operator hired in a commercial operator to do some work and the workers wanted to know why the company’s aircraft were flying but not the commercial operator. Safety has a price.
I believe there are now helos that are able to hover OEI and how they apply alternate requirement in that case I know not.