G'day all,
I think we all need to take a deep breath and settle down a bit...
As is often the case in these forums, people (supposedly professional people) take some pretty cheap shots at each other causing much offence. I'm not sure whether this is as a result of deliberately trying to incite ill feeling or if people simply don't read their posts before firing them off to ensure there is little room for mis-interpretation. Perhaps I'm out of step here but I would prefer not to say something using this medium that I wouldn't say to someone face to face. It's not just professionalism, it's good manners.
With regard to the particular issue at hand, I am in complete agreement with w_ocker with his choice of words and the intent of what he was trying to convey. That is, that EMS does have potentially higher risk than perhaps other sectors of the industry eg. offshore.
I'm not an EMS pilot but I understand EMS operators often work at night, often in marginal (but legal!) weather, single pilot IFR. Compare this with the average offshore pilot who operates mostly by day in the north where the weather is usually CAVOK (cyclone wx not withstanding) with a fellow pilot to keep him/her honest. In addition to this, EMS operators tend to have greater variety in their work where the offshore guys get pretty good at doing much the same thing from day to day.
It would therefore be difficult not to come to the conclusion that the risks involved are POTENTIALLY greater for the EMS operators. It has absolutely nothing to do with professionalism etc but the environment in which they're operating. To suggest that EMS operators are somehow less professional suggests a complete lack of appreciation of what is involved. I can understand joe public coming up with sort of slander but fellow operators ought to know better.
Cheers,
P68
