Am ideal thread to pontificate in...
Why don't we have differential GPS (or WAAS in those areas covered) approaches to oil rigs?
Should be difficult to set up - each rig could have approaches set up every 45° of azimuth without major problems - the visual portion at the bottom shouldn't be difficult to transition to. 8 different possible approach paths to get you down to within 0.5 miles of the rig.
What's stopping us from at least trying this?
And the reason for advocating this is that it would instill the sort of heavily disciplined routine that is standard in the airline industry. (I'm not saying that most helicopter pilots aren't disciplined, but nowhere near as disciplined as the airline industry.)
When 25% of helicopter pilots who have autopilots don't use the autopilot, it says a whole lot about the differences between the RW world and the airlines.
It's nice to see some operators adopting the airlines Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) techniques. It can only help us make things safer.
The question is - why isn't everyone offshore adopting it? Why don't the oil companies demand it?