Has anybody read the thread about the S76 down in the GOM? The crew waited 3 hours and swam 2 miles to an abandoned platform before being rescued.
Imagine the same scenario in Nigeria. The aircraft goes down an hour before sunset. Even if it had satellite tracking, the person responsible for watching that is busy downloading cooking recipes
. Eventually somebody notices that nothing's been heard for around an hour when all the crews are getting ready to go home and someone asks 'Okay, is everybody back now?'. By this time the company's received information that an ELT signal has been picked up. Now the SAR goes into full drive. But wait..... where's the winch-equipped helicopter with a trained and current crew?
The aircraft slowly sinks into the Bight of Biafra. The survivors haven't managed to get the dinghy out because it was too difficult to pull it from under the seat (it having no mechanism to assist in its deployment). Crews fly out on an SAR mission superbly equipped with a spare dinghy (or maybe even an ARK set if there's anybody around who knows how to deploy it). The oil companies despatch a boat towards the site. I wonder how many would survive?
For those that did, what expert medical attention awaits them when they get back to the beach. Mobil refused medical attention to the injured from the Eket attack 3 weeks ago. Would they do the same to the survivors of a ditching?
Yet crews fly day in, day out, often in marginal weather, with no SAR cover whatsoever, have inadequate medical facilities, lousy insecure housing and still come back for more! If all of us flying in Nigeria were to go for psychological evaluation I wonder what a psychiatrist would make of us? We must be a truly sad bunch of no brainers to keep on taking it
