Swamp Queen hit the nail on the head!
The night offshore approach when handled in the form of an ARA lends itself to the coupled approach and by inference the coupled aircraft lends itself to the ARA.
Our fixed wing brothers don't do VFR.
This is for a good reason and if it were suggested that they carry out an approach with no guidance, no lead in lights, no VASI or PAPI to a series of lights that were correct when the pilot guessed that it looked rugby ball shaped, the CAA would have kittens and the pilots would refuse.
Offshore helicopter flying at night and landing on a rig, platform, or boat will always be much more difficult than landing to a well lit, instrumented, radar monitored, multi-thousand foot long patch of pavement equipped with lead-ins and real lighting stuck out all by itself with no clutter or obstacles about the place.
There are a lot of questions that need answering and some soul searching on industry attitudes, SOP's, and the like.
But....here we are....within the same company we have both the most advanced aircraft but at the same time still operates in the same locale what can only be described as antiques....aircraft without an autopilot of any description.
We sell the new high tech machines citing enhanced safety due to techology but cling to the antique machines of the 70's.
We cannot have it both ways.....either as an industry we embrace technology and up-grade the fleet as we can or we will never rise to the level of the airlines in safety and continue to have human factors losses of aircraft and people.
I can recall saying....."If I just had a Rad Alt!"
Then it was...."If I just had a Decca Tans!"
Then it was...."If I just had Attitude Hold!"
We got all that stuff plus FMS, 2-3-4 Axis Autopilots, Digital Displays, really good Radar, GPS/GNSS, EPIRBS that broadcast our location if we need it, HUMS, FDR's, CVR's, StormScope, Sat Phones, TCAS, EGPWS, but yet there has not been an industry wide, pilot population wide shift to fully incorporate the use of all that wizardly as a standard.
How many times when asked, have you heard the response from management..."Who's gonna pay for that?"
My answer is the pilots, crew, and passengers.....if we don't change with the times!
The latest Safety goal is to reduce accidents by either 80 or 90 percent over a ten year period. I give so much credence to such industry/FAA/CAA programs I cannot even tell you what the stated goal is.
Since we kicked off the latest program.....how much progress have we made in reducing accidents?