one of the ironies of this whole idea is that you cannot get from the front seat to the back of a 139 while the machine is in flight, there is a bloody great bulkhead in the way.
one of the prereqisites of the tender is that you could move back.
the 139 i had a look at makes it impossible.
the crewies that take this up,(and a few wont), will have to take a pay cut from their $65,000+ paypacket to get what a co pilot currently gets.
a lot of the crewies are well over 40, some 48 and over fifty and they don't need a change late in life.
the crewies will never be given full command and cannot move up if a captain retires.
oogle, you are right, the rescue operation that picked up the 407 crew had gone to the reef to pick up the crew of a stricken yacht and found the crashed helicopter when they arrived.
the 412 guys won't do a night winch even with auto hover because they rarely use it and are not always up to speed. another good sop from qr.