Previous posts on this topic have indicated that the standard of maintenance at Gulf Helis is VERY suspect. This opinion is held by GHC pilots, Oil Company auditors and some of the few engineers remaining on the GHC payroll. There have been opinions voiced of ‘every one waiting for a big accident’.
Not sure why none of the usually vociferous GHC pprune posters have not mentioned it BUT the word (substantiated) coming down from GHC is that they went much closer to having a maintenance caused BIG BANG as any partly sane company management would want to get.
The story is: A Bell 412 on an over land photo shoot, with both the sliding doors secured in the full open position, LOST the left sliding door in flight. It was only ‘the luck of being married to Irish’ that the door was lost Downwards and not up into the rotor. An air search failed to find the door.
As is his usual way S Mc of the engineering management immediately blamed the pilot!! S Mc you are NOT missed at ADA.
However the door turned up from a most embarrassing location ( the back yard of a senior manager of a GHC most important client ) and it was obvious that poor maintenance was the problem with one of the door retaining parts being way past WELL WORN. I wonder if S Mc apologised to the pilot??
Good Luck to the pilots and pax at GHC. BUT the good luck may have already been used up.