I have to agree with DB....and take issue with HC.
DB....are you familiar with the Flight Operations in Alaska out of Deadhorse and the weather they fly in up there? The folks in Canada flying out of Newfie Land also encounter some interesting weather. Don't think the North Sea is the worst place on earth for Offshore Flying.....there are places that make it look pretty mild. The Chukchi Sea area is far more remote and much more inhospitable than the North Sea. US Operators out of Deadhorse have been doing IFR Underslung work as a routine mission for Decades.
One of the dangers of running your own Cadet Program and then bringing those young pilots into the system is that it affords a great chance of limiting the "world view" of the organization. Bluntly put....it is incestuous and can lead to Blinder Vision.
That one 5000 Hour pilot failed to cut the mustard does not confirm the wisdom of hiring low hour pilots with minimum qualifications. If you did that.....would you ever hire an ex-military pilot?
I have in the past made comments over the quality of North Sea junior pilots sent to Nigeria to get "Command" time before rotating back to the North Sea as Captains.....most of whom were Cadets who had moved along in the system. Some of these young guys were selected for Training Positions as well.
If you want to teach a singular proprietary method....that is exactly the way to do it I guess....you take a kid and mold him to exactly fit the mold, repeat the Company mantra, and everyone is happy as the system is then self duplicating.
Sadly, if you have built in problems for any reason....those problems are very well entrenched and inflict a great expense before they are seen to be wrong and thus are very hard to change.
I believe in broadening the Gene Pool....by drawing a widely varied pool of pilots, train them to your standards and procedures, and if they cannot adapt then down the road they go. At the same time, it pays to remember there many paths to Salvation and some are better than others. The trick is being wise enough to embrace the different but better even if it is from an "Outsider".
HC's system has those built in problems just as every large Operator has...as over time the end result is a group of folks that see but one way to do things and that begets a bit of arrogance that is counter productive at times.
His outfit has done a great job of training Airline Pilots over the years so it would seem other Operators don't mind bringing in North Sea Helicopter pilots into the fixed wing Airline business which in my mind completely shoots down this notion we should train and retain our own pilots so we have a nice homogenous pool of people working for us.
Are we confusing ability for experience HC?
5,000 hours of Ag work certainly would not be a good foundation for North Sea Offshore flying would it? I can assure you any amount of North Sea Offshore flying does not set you up to be able to Longline or fly Forest Fires.
Last edited by SASless; 14th Sep 2013 at 12:09.