Given;
- the current lack of confidence in the Super Puma variants by those who travel to work in them,
- the potential loss of revenue to UK PLC and the rig operators from a sudden reduction in available helicopters,
- the evident difference in accident/incident rates between the various North Sea helicopter operators,
the industry and regulators need to find out what the differences are between the various operators' day to day methods which enables some to have a considerably better safety record than others.
This is not going to be revealed in an hour-long tour by a company's
PR department, so what is needed is a task force of experienced (maybe retired?) helicopter industry professionals who can go into each company and work alongside the personnel there, in all operations and maintenance departments, to establish which aspects of one company's culture enable it to operate the same machine as its competitors, but with less incidents.
Each visit would need to last weeks, if not months, to give time for a range of incidents to be observed and see how they are managed, as well as giving sufficient time for the 'being watched' feeling to go and the true style of operations to be observed.
Such an exercise would need the cooperation of all the operators, and assurances that the sole objective is to bring industry standards up to the level of the best.