What are bears?
If you mean passengers, why don't you use the term?
"Bears" is indeed a slang term for offshore workers i.e. PAX, also known as North Sea Tigers.
As an offshore worker and PAX now based in Canada, I can tell you that the latest incident has done nothing to re-assure the Grand Banks Tigers in their trust of helo transportation, even though Cougar has officially concluded their S-92a testing. Currently the joint offshore operators task force has not completed their own internal investigation and approved regular offshore transfer flights. I can see the same requirement being present for the North Sea operators before the bears will trust flying in the Pumas again, no matter what variant is selected. The operators need to improve their information sharing and make all passengers aware of the true risk of flying helos.
Wrt. the PAX not wearing personal PLBs due to interference with the ELTs, why was this not picked up during type approving? Is this one of the reasons why the PLB and EPRIB frequencies were recently changed?
The current economic climate should not be having an impact on the maintenance and safety standard of this industry, and if it comes out from the reports that this is actually the case then you may find a lot of dissention in the ranks, both from the pilots and their precious cargo.