TET, you actually make some sense! I had to leave it for a while and then come back to it, but you do.
Let's sift out the stuff about you helping the cheese and kisses make dinner...
You are saying that we need to get the attention of those that seem to matter. The insurance companies, the hirers, those that control the dollars. You used the example of turning the engine off and going into 'an auto'. How are you suggesting that we send the industry into an auto? "Check the RPM!!?"
You talked about the time the musters got together, and as a part of the industry had a win for F&D. You talked about a new HAA. You talked about using better comms, maybe our keyboards (Or this forum...) But who do we aim at?
There is a pecking order that pilots know all too well. The student needs to learn. The instructor needs hours, so he teaches. The new pilot goes flying (tourists mostly, b/c city boys don't know one end of a cow from another) and then become instructors. Instructors hope to teach at a company that gets some other contracts (fires, power lines, etc), pick up a NVFR and other ratings and then move onto EMS, ENG, off-shore.
Who wants to upset this delicate balance? Even tourist operators don't like taking pilots at 110 hours b/c they're too big an insurance risk. The industry is controlled by the dollar and the insurance companies.
How do we control insurance companies? As Rob Rich said in a recent heli-news, (not word for word...) the "insurance companies need to understand that student pilots have met the standard and are safe!" Therefore the premiums should be aimed at the role that the helicopter is being used for, not at the experience of the pilot. Maybe we need to show the insurance companies how we earnt our dollars, what jobs we did in the past year and then they can calculate the risks involved, averaged out over the total of the jobs and then charge an appropriate premium.
This means that a low hour pilot, just out of training, being closely supervised by the CP should be a safer prospect than someone working fires or power line inspections. (No insult intended for pilots involved in recent mishaps, just stating that we don't see many incidents involving tourist operators, and we shouldn't.)
When we realise that the cost of the risk is what stifles us, we can then start to work towards fixing it.
CYHeli
