ShyTorque wrote:
"This profit driven philosophy is quite possibly where the much of the press-on-itis comes from. As for a mantra that the USA always knows best and no-one else is entitled to comment on any of it because they don't understand.....really!
How would relatives of a deceased patient or crew member feel if they knew that lives of their loved ones might not have been lost if things had been different i.e. profit for the service provider wasn't such a major issue?
We had a similar issue in UK a couple of decades ago. The only logical remedy was for CAA legislation to be tightened up, and it was.
As the saying goes, if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident."
Sir, the scheduled airlines are all very much profit oriented, at least in the US, and their safety record is a respectable benchmark. It's not the "for profit aspect" that compromises safety, it's the methods used to maximize profitability.
The ultimate criterion might be "profits" but the methods are the same with bad management across the aviation spectrum, for profit and non-profit; government and private. Bad management encouraging bad practices isn't specific to any model.
But you really can't compare helicopter EMS ops with the airlines. Airlines fly under IFR, above safety altitude in IFR equipped aircraft, with IR rated pilots (two of them), to and from IFR airports.
Not trying to fly through the hills in bad weather at night. Completely different ball games.
The point I was making is that if the EMS service provider had no profit to make, or profit to lose, based on retrieval of the patient, it would put less presssure on the crew to press on in marginal conditions.