ppheli:
Yes, the comparison with the Varsity is unfair. The CAA blokes agree with you in the article.
The article says: 'The CAA's policy on passengers in ex-military aircraft was written after an accident in 1984 in which a Vickers Varsity crashed on its way to an airshow, killing 11 of its 14 occupants. A similar accident four years earlier had killed seven people. After the Varsity tragedy the AAIB recommended, and the CAA ruled, that passengers not needed for the conduct of the flight or the maintenance of the aircraft away from base be not
carried.
Carl Thomas (manager of the small aircraft unit of the aircraft certification section, the man who is responsible for permit helicopters) accepts, however, that the CAA's policy is unclear and
difficult to enforce. 'We recognise that we've got to change the policy. The current situation is untenable,' he says. 'We can't enforce it, except in extreme cases perhaps, but certainly we can't enforce it the way we intended the policy to be applied. We are aware that people are flying in the aircraft who are not the people we intended to be flying in the aircraft. But when you look at the words literally, which you need to do if you're going to go to a court of law, you simply can't apply the intended interpretation. We need change.'
Leon Winnert, the bloke who did the research to get the Gazelle on the Permit, makes the point that a civilian is ten times more likely to crash an ex-military helicopter than a military pilot was, and says that in one case (I believe the Scout) the accident rate now is one hundred times higher than it was in the military. Nonetheless, the CAA seems to be leaning towards removing the restriction.
Carl Thomas says that the CAA's practice of lumping all ex-military aircraft into a statistical group and tarring them all with the same high-accident brush is probably not the right approach. Most fatal accidents are air show demos that go wrong, so they're looking at precise data for individual machines. On that basis, the Gazelle looks less frightening.
There's heaps more in the article, which is well worth a read. If you know an AOPA member, he or she should have a copy.