Excellent post Mars. There is one limitation to the logic though and it was seen in the Cougar 851 incident. A situation arose whereby the co-pilot felt unable or incapable of taking control from a captain who had lost control. I sympathise with cougar and am sure it is not a problem unique to their operation for all the reasons I stated in a previous post.
When a multi-pilot helicopter is limited to certain phases whereby only one pilot can control the aircraft there is a new crm issue. This is the case for example when landing an S92 on a helideck. The PM has little or no visual cues to the deck and cannot land if needs be. Therefore when the captain is the PM and the co-pilot is new/inexperienced/tired/stressed/confused/incapacitated there is a crm problem. The same is of course true the other way around - when a co-pilot does not speak up when the experienced captain is PF and loses orientation for whatever reason. For that critical phase of flight the captain is entirely dependent on trusting the other guy and is effectively somewhat out of the loop by definition. How does this manifest itself during line training of a brand new pilot who can be expected to make mistakes? We are relying on a deal of luck and therefore by the same rationale must know that we cannot be lucky all the time. Again a cultural issue? Are all our captains suitable for role or are they just highest on a seniority list?
Last edited by 26500lbs; 27th Oct 2013 at 14:23.