Shawn, all of our LPC/OPC's etc have to be handflown without use of the autopilot! If we dont hand fly regularly it makes it more difficult when we do the tests. Even though the ops manual says use AP whenever poss!!!
The oil companies won't cough up!!! It's all down to the beancounters. I would have thought anything to do with safety would be exempt from cost cutting measures.
www.refabs.com
This works well, fly over this deck every week, but the companies are loathe to pay for it.
Here is one of my own gripes:-
We launch offshore knowing the wx is marginal, (i'm beginning to think pressure is on the offshore bods to get us out there so exaggerate wx sometimes???) given to us by standby boat staff looking out of the window. They give horiz viz (easily worked out) but they also give cloud heights which bear no resemblance to the real world. Ok, so we fly for 25 minutes out there, get to the other end, cloud base at 100', viz poor, fly an ARA, no rig seen, decide it's not even worth flying another attempt it's so bad, head back to airport. 1 hour cost to the customer?? $000's surely?
Ok, so what would a cloud height radar cost? I'm sure it would pay for itself very quickly, after even just one week I expect. They don't see it like this though. It's an outlay and not gonna happen.