Many thanks Jacques....have sent you a private message. In the interests of continuing the discussion on this forum. I had a couple of responses from people where it was needed...and a firing was conducted that probably saved the life of down-the-wire-man. I also had evidence of control malfunctions where IF there had been someone on a wire, the ONLY way of cutting the wire would have been by the pilot because of the lateral forces involved. These control malfunctions (for a great variety of reasons) are not rare although having someone on the winch at the time is rare.
There is a discussion that those helicopters being used overland dont' really need it but everyone agrees that over water, especially working with ships or boats, it is. Now, do we ban helos cot fitted with cutters from doing over water work? Sometimes we need every helicopter we can find (such as the Sydney to Hobart race) so limiting which ones could be used might cause an unnecessary problem.
Inadvertent firings....well, procedures and systems should be in place to minimise the chances of those happening. How far do we go down the line of removing certified systems to address a failure in procedures or violations of procedures? Ideally, a system should be designed to be resilient to human failure but sometimes, the only defence we have is adherence to checklist procedures. This, I believe is a case in point. Do we remove one safety system because the occassional person fails to adhere to a checklist OR the operator does not have an adequate checklist procedure in place. Considering the number of winches conducted around the world, the number of inadvertent firings, and the number of problems that have been had with the cutters, are we over reacting to something that has such a small chance of happening.
One other thing, the discussion most people have given me in support of removing cutters has been in relation to EMI-induced firings and not finger trouble.
No, sorry, I have to disagree at this stage (although I do look forward to seeing your study).