It's not the actual safety record of the type that matters so much as the bears'
perception of that safety record.
Remember that the bears completely lost confidence in the Chinook after three serious accidents, one of which was in the Brit sector. Once that confidence has been lost it became impossible to restore.
The bears, en masse, can actually be quite tribal and a crowd mentality can take over. The Chinook became uneconomic in the Brit sector of the North Sea, even on otherwise economic sectors, not because the type was intrinsically unsafe, but because the bears collectively refused to fly in the type because of their
perception that the type was unsafe.
These two recent accidents will have to handled with the greatest of delicacy, a delicacy which was spectacularly absent from Bond management in the first two or three days after the Etap ditching. If there's anything the bears hate more than being told half-truths, it's being told nothing at all.
Bond management has done itself no favours by issuing a statement in the recent case, after the media already knew of the Mayday transmission, with Bond's Bill Munro being quoted as saying that:
he had no information to suggest a mechanical failure on the aircraft
It will matter little to the bears that the two recent accidents were totally different in nature and had no common cause(s), if that turn out to be the result of the two investigations. It won't even matter to the bears that the two aircraft were different variants. To most bears a "Puma" is a Puma is a Puma. To most bears a "crash" is a crash is a crash.
I hope that Bond senior management is discreetly hiring the best HR and
PR consultants in the business to put together a cunning plan to mould the bears' perceptions in a positive way. I'm quite certain that BP has already done so.
The last thing anybody needs is a widespread loss of passenger confidence in Pumas (of any variant), or in Bond, or in helicopters flying to/from/between BP installation, or any permutation thereof.
Merely protesting that the Puma is "safe" simply will not work, even though probably true.