The thing about being a professional helicopter pilot is that you are pretty much on your own, decision-making-wise, especially out there in the GOM. This is both good and bad. Pilots who are susceptible to pressure sometimes yield.
Gomer Pylot wrote:
In the GOM, things are run by the dispatchers & field foremen. Their only interest is in getting things done quickly and cheaply.
Heh. Welcome to civilian aviation, where making money is the name of the game. If you think this
only occurs in the GOM, you are seriously mistaken. While weather minimums are documented in black and white, real weather seldom is. But you cannot fault anyone for trying to make you fly in weather as low as your minimums allow. And as a professional, you should be able to do this unless there is some compelling reason not to (e.g. squall line or nasty cold front coming which would intercept your flight path).
The standard scenario is for the dispatcher or foreman to push the pilots to fly no matter what, and only back down if the pilots firmly refuse. They don't consider the possibility of an accident, they just want to get the flights done as soon as possible. I've been pushed to fly well before daylight, by companies whose written policies clearly prohibited it. There is very little active oversight by management or safety personnel over the dispatchers or foremen.
It's really very simple: Go by the rules. Nobody can fault you for that. If someone pressures you to do something else, just look at them like they're crazy...because they are. If you get run-off, you get run-off. Shrug and say, "Oh, well." If your management (you know, the ones who actually pay your salary) won't back you up for going by the book, it's best to say good-bye and find another employer.
SASless wondered:
I say Gomer....why do the pilots put up with this and not report the practice to the FAA Inspectors? It would seem with the union support available and the Federal laws that protect folks that report safety violations and problems like these, that helicopter pilots in the Gulf could freely contact the FAA whenever they get pressure to fly in below minima or dangerous weather.
And what is the FAA going to do? They don't care. They really don't. What they care about is what WE (the pilots) do under such pressure. If we succumb to it, who is wrong: us or the customer? Nor could the FAA really do anything about a customer who asks a pilot to fly in below-minimum weather. Is that a crime? Hardly.
The "daylight" issue is pretty weird. Some companies do have rules stating that operations may not begin before sunrise. But inasmuch as the FAA allows pilots who are not night-current to fly as far as ONE HOUR prior to sunrise, and ONE HOUR
after sunrise, then we're just talking semantics here. Personally, I never minded taking off a little before sunrise (it's only going to get lighter, right?) until the company I was working for put it in writing that we could not do this. <shrug> Oh, well.
If you ever want a lesson in being pressured to fly, go to work for some yahoo who owns his own aircraft but does not fly. They will expect the ridiculous. It will test your patience. It will test your diplomacy and tact. It will make those foremen in the GOM seem like rank amateurs.