Originally Posted by
aa777888
There's a bit of hyperbole in my post. The op's I'm associated with do not allow, and I personally don't allow, people who are grossly inebriated as passengers. However, depending on the type of event, the smell of alcohol is often noticeable. I.e. the average person, having a good time, with a little bit of Etoh inside them, is capable of operating the door. Not really any different than when flying a commercial airline. No drinks allowed on board or served in flight, though!
Continuing with this digression...I worry a great deal more when I am asked to host someone on board with mental disabilities. Mildly inebriated folks are relatively predictable. I have no idea what those with mental disabilities will do. In this PC day and age it is very difficult to gracefully refuse service to such. I have standing orders to put them in the back seat, preferably with a guardian of some sort. The Robinson T-bar cyclic is just too vulnerable to allow that kind of unpredictable or potentially impulsive behavior to be near it. Even with the precaution of the back seat, if things start to get weird the flight gets cut short.
Maximum digression: the passenger that I hate the most is the bully father who is making his scared-to-death kid go. This can be hard to detect on the ground, but in the air it is always evident. Those flights get cut short, too.
aa777888,
Totally agree about keeping an eye on pax for signs of excessive alcohol or anything else taken in excess! Saw a pax refused a transfer flight in St Lucia because he was clearly very drunk. As far as been not very different to flying on a commercial airline I can’t seem to remember the last time I saw a pax helping close a door... not sure what commercial airline you fly with?
As for you cutting flights short, if you are flying 150 pax per day in your R44 your tour flights are probably a 10 minute trip, you can’t cut it much shorter than that!