Mars wrote: "We cannot rely upon our Airworthiness colleagues as their world is dominated by the manufacturers."
I do find the attitude of helicopter manufacturers deplorable (eg "the 'men in grey suits' will do as they are told and issue a TC"). F/JAR29 is meanwhile an incredibly archaic code, that is probably worse than UK (say) had 10 years ago (and its gut wrenching to hear manufacturers crowing that they meet the latest requirement when they 'negotiated' the F/JAR standard to the lowest common denominator).
The ops community however has is faults. In the helicopter world they are far too keen to follow on the coat tails of the oil companies with requirements that apply to oil and gas operations, while avoiding the onshore market that doesn't have that influence.
The JAR-OPS Flight Safety & Accident Prevention Programme is a joke - most authorities only apply it as rule that gives an excuse to employ a nearly-retired pilot to learn how file safety reports. Its not a patch on the SMS approach that most of the oil comapany majors now require and still doesn't include even basic things like health monitoring programmes.
You only have to look at a recent CAA Flight Ops missive to show how confused regulators can be. That document had three sets of 'recommendations' following 2 recent helicopter accidents. One just suggests operators should 'consider' doing something. One suggests that though certain operators are not required to do something they should discharge a 'duty of care' over the issue and effectively do it some of the time, and the third says operators should 'review' an issue by a specific date.