According to airwave45 North Sea operations are half as safe as those in the Gulf of Mexico!
Who would have thought it!
AE,
Not my Stats. (and not N Sea as that includes the Noggies, but Scottish)
Taken from
http://www.ogp.org.uk/pubs/434-11.pdf
Between 1998 and 2006 (ok, old data, but still relevant)
North Sea 1.3 million hours flown, 12 accidents, 18 killed.
GoM 3.7 million hours flown, 106 accidents, 53 killed.
Everywhere else 3.1 million hours flown, 69 accidents, 149 killed.
Given that the Noggies are unfairly saddled with Scottish prangs, we'll take them out, giving 650,000 flying hours to work the stats against.
In the Scottish sector, in the above period, you flew 36,111 hours per fatality.
The Americans flew 69,811 hours per fatality. A large amount of which was in single engine single pilot helicopters, which even slf understand is not as good as medium/heavy twins with two pilots up front.