A very sad accident again. I am sorry about the loss of life, and my condoleances to all the families concerned.
We as professional pilots do speculate, but certainly feel these tragedies could be avoided if only a better training system for Malaysian helicopter pilots was available.
For the non familiar readers to Borneo island, Sarawak, is quite rugged, jungle type environment, with steep high medium mountains (up to 11000' but mostly 5000') hot and humide, windy at the normal time (midday, strongest 2pm etc).
Most of the Foreigner pilots (as we are called) have received training in Mountain Flying, a very specialised topic. Unfortunately our Malaysian counterparts do not ( and if any, it is minute)
Add the pressure of above management and clients, the loss of face syndrome, etc and you have the typical recipe for disaster, which happens too often.
I have read that some government officials are now blaming Bell helicopters as a possible reason for the crashes? Such mentality cannot help to highlight the real reason.
So what can be done or learnt? Revise the training syllabus, provide a thorough practical flying, with some Western experience ( and please do not start to tell me we are biased) and the Malaysian safety record for Helicopter will be improved.