Accident list drawn from the AAIB investigations
This helps me to put some perspective on the risks for our passengers. Of the 3 dozen or so accidents listed for 33 years, about 12 involved fatalities. So there is an accident with fatalities in UK offshore operations about once every 3 years (every 2.75 years if you prefer), on average.
My "back of a cigarette pack" arithmetic comes up with maybe 50 return flights from Aberdeen and Scatsta each day for all three operators combined, five days a week. For 50 weeks a year, I get 12500 return flights a year for the Northern North Sea, or 25000 single flights.
Each passenger who is doing a 3 week on, 3 week off cycle, goes on about 17 single flights a year, or 46 flights every 2.75 years.
Now my shaky grasp of statistics is revealed, because using the above info, I reckon that each passenger has roughly a 1:1500 chance of being on a flight involving some fatalities in each 2.75 year cycle.
Yet chance doesn't always work so simply and I agree that we must strive to improve on what is already a very low risk.
But unless we can fly in daytime, VFR only, benign sea states, carrying a maximum passenger load of 50%, with survival-trained cabin crew, in aircraft with EC225 quality autopilots to unobstructed helidecks, I don't see how we can much improve the accident rate.
Last edited by Colibri49; 29th Sep 2013 at 11:54.