The most astonishing thing I've read for a while was in the Cougar report
Although the first officer had almost 1000 total flight hours on the S-92A, many of those hours were spent in coupled flight during instrument flight rules (IFR) flights to and from the offshore facilities, and not hand flying the helicopter. As a result, the first officer did not feel confident about having the necessary instrument flying skills to safely recover from the unusual attitude that had developed.
This discussion has bounced back and forward over the last few days with the automation versus manual flying debate but when a situation such as this is discovered to exist within the Oil & Gas flying fraternity overseas, are we supposed to believe that similar cannot exist in the North Sea?
