To wear or not to wear?
The day the **** hits YOUR fan you will wish you had every piece of safety and survival gear strapped to you! I fly over the water a hell of a lot and wear a helmet every time I get into a machine even if its just a ground run. Whats the point in doing HUET if you drown because you knocked yourself out during the inital ditching? As for the pax getting nervous well on the very rare occasion that anyone has mentioned why am I wearing a lid I just tell them its ok if they get smacked in the face with a seagull at 100kts as get to wake up with a broken nose and a great pub story! However if I get smacked unconcious then we all die and no more pub stories - ever! Harsh but true Mr Pax. That normally shuts them up and they can see the reasoning behind it! I wear a full fire retardent flight suit, boots and a Switlik vest with every survival aid known to man stuffed into it. Its a dangerous game and as professional pilots we should all be looking at risk management and minimisation. Pilots have a duty of care to our pax and wearing the right gear is only a small part of it. The people we fly are well used to the pilots wearing a helmet and full safety gear. I'm sure that if we turned up wearing a surf shirt, baseball cap and shorts they would look sideways at us as if to say "is this guy serious"!?