So its been Cougar with a 92 and this week Bond with an L2, last month it was PHI and a 76 that in good weather rolled back the power and descended into a swamp for whatever reason.
I saw it when CHC had a 76 go swimming off Angola and again later when Heli Union tried to remodel the deck with a Dauphane……
Its happened before and will again, every operator has had a run of “un-luck” but more often than not is luck and the use of well trained people in the front that the oil companies have not had more people go swimming.
Personally I have for close to the last 9 years in one way or another had my job rely on the oil industry and yes mostly the contracts are very one sided in favor of the oil companies.
In all that time I have only come across one auditor who was not really just ticking boxes to qualify the safety of each and every particular organization he visited.
Why? You ask, well this individual started out in the cockpit and had a wide and varied experience before he went the safety route.
Thorough yes, but more importantly he knew within 5 mins of meeting a guy if they had the right level of competency. Accurate about 98% of the time.
There is a difference between audited safety and actual competency, which I would hazard to guess that most readers here agree that sometimes the crews shake their collective heads when a event happens and it turns out benign….. out of pure luck.
It will happen again, and we will all be saddened by the loss, but in the mean time “we” will be the last line of defense in the swiss cheese and numerous events both self induced and unexplained will happen and many will never be know about.
Fly safe out there
