P and A,
Very well put together post.
There is a view from the front of the bus that every effort will be made to understand root cause for each incident, I believe you as an industry do that exceptionally well.
It's a very reactive way to address safety issues though.
The Norwegian approach seems to be significantly more proactive.
As for comparing stats, you can get them to say anything as you pointed out, the 777 may have crashed every other month over the last two but despite flying into a wall at close to your Vne, it still only killed one person.
(terrible tragedy with the emergency services, for all concerned)
It's a tank.
Data mining the stats GoM vs NS is possible as Take off and landing data is there. But it's pretty obvious that N Sea ops are only, at best, almost as good as GoM. (but you would be stretching things to say as good as)
Given the differences in machinery, that should not be so.
Look at the difference between the East and West of the N Sea and a blind man in a dark room could see that something is not right.
I'm with you in that I don't think any specific aircraft is responsible for this.
Given the percieved difficulty by the pilots / mechs on here to pinpoint why we are not as good as the Norwegians, I'll happily see the SP sacrificed to the press as that will shake the business up sufficiently to make us find out what is going on.
It's not big and it's not clever, but it will make change happen.