maxwelg, I don't think there were many Chinook pilots who wouldn't go right back on it now if the opportunity offered. I know I would. It was a superb machine and inherently far safer than anything else on the N Sea.
At the time of the Sumburgh accident (entirely mod not type or inherent design related) there had already been a number of Puma accidents/incidents involving gearboxes and I can recall the incredulity when the P & J ran the Chinook out of town with it's campaign of misinformation and hysteria - and the Pumas were still landing with white-hot gearboxes and no one seemed to bat an eyelid. It seems incredible to me that 25 years later the damn things are still falling out of the sky and only now people seem to be wondering why...
I can see that argument that 44 people is a lot to risk in one package - tho it is one that doesn't seem to affect the rest of aviation (viz 747/A380) - but a Chinook with pop out windows would have been an unbeatable solution for decks large enough to take it. The lack of mid-cabin exits was a mistake in retrospect, but no one had even considered their psychological importance at the time as the 234 was rightly regarded as being completely amphibious and almost impossible to capsize.
Sad, a missed opportunity.
I do find it irritating that so many non-aviation people seem to have decided that an aircraft is unsafe when the crews who are exposed to 50 times the hours in it don't, and that everyone seems to have decided with no evidence whatsoever that this accident is tech-related.
Still, if the media did for one type on the N Sea, it can do it again for another. But this time there aren't lots of spare S61s sitting around to take up the slack. It's not going to be easy to do that this time if the grounding stays for a while.
Last edited by Agaricus bisporus; 26th Aug 2013 at 23:12.