Sad Story Big Mike! They were so proud about their ex-swiss A-109K2.
To me a well known situation. I refuse a flight at night in difficult weather and an other operator will probably accept. On the next morning i have to declare my decision to the boss who is allways max interested in flights
. "How can this be? The others have flown!" And all the base pilots have heard from him in the past "Other pilots fly also!". There is allways a pressure to the pilot. Sneeking and unverifiably. Because there are no papers. There are phone calls in the morning, "How many hours we have flown in the night? None? Please explain your decision." or also very popular - statistics! "We are 10 hours behind the same month last year. We have to fly more!" or "This year is going really bad, all prices have increased. We need more hours!" All the base pilots are highly experienced, more than 5000h, years in the business and in the area. But because we are so "difficult" (means carefully) we need urgently "new blood". New guys, lucky to have a job, without type ratings, without experience in the business (EMS), without experience in the flight area (mountains, heavy winters). AND they do the flights! Understand, we do single pilots ops at night, in a VFR twin without AP, without wxRadar.
That's the situation and i'm pissed about the "Safety Syposiums" (my boss is seating in one of the first rows i bet), about the authorities, only preparing dump papers and i'm pissed about me and my collegues. Because if i refuse the flight, absolutely sure an other pilot will accept.