Originally Posted by
obnoxio f*ckwit
I’ve just picked on this individual post because it sort of illustrates my point; absolutely no criticism of it or the poster is intended.
Is it a particular helicopter thing to demand groundings the moment something happens?
On Monday a 737 crashed into the sea killing everyone on board, but I’ve yet to see any calls for 737s to be grounded.
In 2014 a 777 vanished without trace in the Indian Ocean, but I saw no calls for the 777s to be grounded, or questions about lack of emergency ADs/ASBs?
Three weeks after the 2016 EC225 crash in Norway, an Egyptian A320 crashed into the Med, with total loss of life. The cause is (
AFAIK) still not known, yet our oil workers were happy to fly to Aberdeen on an Airbus A320 the next day before refusing to fly on an Airbus EC225.
What is it with helicopters that we have to react this way when our FW cousins do not?
Disclosure: I am not a pilot of any sort. I am a retired oil worker, and was in the N Sea since the 70s in the days of Bristow, BA, and B Cal. I know it ages me.
To try and answer the question, I think much of it is simply “perception”. Be it U.K. or US, I think we hold our carriers and their pilots and ground staff in such high regard, that an incident of this kind makes us feel that questioning the air worthiness of the aircraft is our first legitimate port of call. When incidents occur with operators from what we see as either third world or countries that we perceive not to maintain the standards we do, then there is a tendency to consider pilot error or low grade maintenance to be a primary factor. Rightly or wrongly, that tended to be the viewpoint back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Having flown with operators in SA and Africa, there were plenty of moments when that bias was re-inforced.....rightly or wrongly.