Been following this thread with interest as I work offshore and have done for over a decade. I read the recent report of the incident, not a pilot but have a background in military air traffic and flight ops, and there was no mention of warnings being given to the crew that their speed was decreasing. It mentions height warnings but nothing about speed which was a critical factor in this incident. Just curious about that.
As there has been some comments about blame recently perhaps a bit of feedback from a passengers may be useful. There has been a lot of discussion offshore obviously about this accident and the previous events. But the vast majority of people I have spoken with, and the conversations I have been party to, show that you guys have the confidence of the workforce offshore. We are not stupid and by the very nature of the work we do know that there is a) risk and b) people can and do make mistakes. It happens. We dont have all the facts as yet but all indications are that there was a human error at work here. But from this thread it is clear that the crews are looking at every possibility and trying to learn from what happened. Cant see what else can be done. People are naturally defensive and I understand that, nothing more natural than standing up for your colleagues, but to me its more important that every avenue is investigated and I am happy that is being done. I have always taken the view that if the pilot is happy to sign for it I am happy to sit in the back. Still am.
The bottom line is that the only people strapping into these aircraft are the crews and passengers, yet we seem to have almost zero interaction with each other. We just get in, sit behind you for a bit, and get off at at the other end. I want to see the CAA led investigation and the individual inquiries the helicopter companies being pilot led. Will they be ??, just how much input will you guys have ??, As a passenger I cringe when I hear the suited man from the HSSG going on in fluent managment speak about "opening up a dialogue" with us and I dont really put much store in
PR blurb from the operators and Eurocopter. When the EC225 returned with the gearbox fix the first place I looked was here. I wanted to know what the people driving the thing had to say. The industry is missing a trick here, some guys I have talked to about the helicopter situation have openly commented that the very people whose views they want to hear, the pilots, seem to be the only ones we are not hearing from directly. Now that isnt a crticism as you are employees like us and your bosses want to manage the message that goes out. But I cannot help but feel that a meeing with current pilots would go a long way to put to rest the concerns that a small number working offshore still have. The offshore industry as a whole seems to have lost the human touch in many respects and I feel the current situation would benefit from it.