a senior training Captain, observed that "if the oil companies were really serious about safety, they'd stop night shuttling!"
The reality is that if the oil companies were really serious about safety, they would be doing the research on this (higher level floats) and anything else that warranted it to further reduce the dangers of offshore travel themselves and implementing their findings without waiting for the regulators to impose it upon them.
Instead, costs are cut to the bone in the interests of maintaining profits (and, by extension, investor dividend) and, where the regulatory imperative to do so is weak or non-existent, the interest in change simply isn't there. It's very hard not to have the feeling that a certain amount of loss of life, like "collateral damage" can be tolerated.
Absolutely. I don't work in aviation, but do work in the oil industry (and have made a few chopper flights over the years), in a specialisation similar to aviation inasmuch as we try to prevent future events and loss of life. This is a complex subject and the reality is that there comes a point where you have to stop spending money to make something safer, even in this sort of "zero-tolerance" scenario. The issue is, where is that point? It's just not possible to say "scrap the Puma", or "move to the S-92" without the evidence to prove that that is the solution.
What can be done is to have some deep(er!) conversation about where the risks are, what can be done to prevent or mitigate, what the impacts of those are, and who pays. There are and will always be grey areas. At the end of these analyses, you're absolutely right, there is usually an "acceptable" residual risk, in deaths per 10,000 years (or whatever criterion). Who decides this, and are the guys in the seats behind the bulkhead involved?
There are also issues to me around the contracting of the flight service; the typical method in the industry generally is competitive tender around a specification; if that is the model for chopper service, then presumably that specification has a certain element of minimum safety requirements as perceived by the oilco. I feel that the oilcos and chopper operators all genuinely desire safer operations, but by definition they are operating in the grey area at a point of diminishing safety returns for each extra buck spent, and until a certain "acceptable" level of protection (whatever protective system or monitoring etc) is mandated by law, it is unlikely to happen.
The regulatory authorities have to impose these requirements (be interesting to know from anyone whether Norway has a tighter regulatory regime, regardless of which aircraft they use*), and the oil cos have to knuckle under and put their money where their mouth is. In Aberdeen we daily live with edicts such as holding the handrail, lids on cups of hot coffee, reverse parking etc, but whilst they have their place, these are cheap measures. Someone has to mandate the expensive ones, imho.
(* btw, on my one trip offshore Norway, the life jackets were under our seats ! This unsettled me totally.)