This promotes a very good debate on the safety of operating at night, and I have to agree in general with most of the points that have been made. Whilst over the years many good steps have been made in the area of flight safety by operators, especially in the North Sea, night flying is not one of them. This is an area that must be addressed to the customer though, as they are the driving force behind the scheduling, and if they do not understand the risks, they should be educated. A good example being the S92 flying around without the Sea State 6 floats wired up, yet it will regularly fly over waters considerably greater than Sea State 6. What really are the chances of the oil companies pax all making it home alive in the event of a ditching/sinking aircraft. Risk mitigation or complacency driven by commercial pressure? Who is at fault here - the customer or the operator or both? Flying around knowing that you have very little chance of survival in the event of a ditching strikes me as incredibly naive, and I am amazed it can be certified. There are certain areas of the North Sea where there are still shuttle aircraft every night, making up to 15 landings or more, and this is actually increasing, all driven by a customer who has little regard for real safety considerations. Whilst flight safety is now becoming very organised and prominent amongst aviation companies, the same cannot be said for all of our customers, and now is the time to open the doors to dialogue. Invariably when an incident or accident occurs, the customer is the first to start pointing fingers at pilots, and calling for sackings but perhaps they should start looking inward as well.