"Airwave - lies, damned lies and statistics! Firstly if you look at the accident rate, as opposed to the fatal accident rate, the GoM is far worse. Because they fly small helis, each accident only risks the lives of a handful, so they can have far more fatal accidents than we can. At least a good chunk of the N Sea fatals in that period must have come from the Bristow 76 that disintegrated off Norwich. Really, its hard to see how the operator could have avoided that accident - it was down to an undetectable maintenance error on a rotor blade at Sikorsky. So that one accident really skews the stats. Plus, lots of people can fall into the sea in GoM and in general, because its a more benign environment, they get away without dying. Comparing stats from different types of operations can be misleading."
Totally agree, the GOM is a less hostile environment. Furthermore it's not correct to leave out the Norwegian sector. It is like leaving out a base in the GOM that had few or none accidents.