Something stupid
@hueyracer
I belong to the DRF offshore unit and I had a very similar night trainingsflight 10 days ago with the trainingscaptain, who unfortunately died in this accident.
At the time being I do not have any Insider knowledge of what had happened. So far there are no official nor unofficial facts about this fatal crash.
But I can tell how this Captain acted in my trainingsflight.
As PICUS on the left seat (BK117 has the hoist on the left side) I had been on the controls during the winch ex at the vessel and transferred the controls for the departure from the vessel. During the departure (me not on the controls) I did a radio call to inform the vessel about our departure.
In the debriefing the trainingscaptain argued that it was unsafe to do the radio call and not being "attentive hands off" (to backup the PIC) during the departure. He made pretty clear that both pilots should concentrate exclusively on the departure until reaching a safe altitude.
With this experience in mind I doubt that there was any room for "stupid things" under his command.
As it was said earlier our unit is no maritime SAR outfit. We do Offshore HEMS. Our operation is limited to winch operation on ships/vessels or wind farms.
We don't do winch rescues out of the water. Especially not at night.
Most of our crew members are Ex mil mainly with maritime SAR background ( as ex Army I am an exception). We regularly get training from active maritime SAR crew members.
I hope we get answers soon, so that we can learn from it.