PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Heli 'collides with gas rig' 11-Mar-08
View Single Post
Old 14th Mar 2008, 14:22
  #31 (permalink)  
roundwego
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: UK
Posts: 312
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Now if it had smashed into the crane, spun wildly out of control and then fallen over the side into the sea, killing all onboard, then that would be different. But it didn't.

Unfortunately, the safety culture in some organisations is such that until a tragedy occurs, problems are not taken seriously.

In this event, it sounds that there, but the grace of god, could have been a serious accident with multiple fatalities. Had that occurred, there would have been a full AAIB investigation and, no doubt, good recommendations made and actions taken to reduce the risk of a similar occurrence happening again.

Because luck was on their side, I suspect the investigation will be much lower key, the simple "pilot error" inference will be assumed and not a lot will change.

In my view, any incident which COULD have resulted in a serious accident should be investigated in the same manner as if a serious accident HAD occurred.

How many times do you see in the CAA Safety Digests statements like "Acceptable risk assuming the occurrence rate remains low" at the bottom of a report which COULD have turned out very nasty under slightly different circumstances and only LUCK has prevented it.
roundwego is offline