I see ATP offshore helicopter pilots who, if you fail the GPS, get lost. And what's worse, they have no idea how to get found again. I've seen ATP offshore pilots, give them a minor technical malfunction in the traffic pattern, they get totally pre-occupied with it, lose SA and fly downwind for 15 miles, bust their ATC clearance, and eventually realise they are lost and have no idea how to get back to the 7000' long runway they took off from 10 minutes earlier. I've seen ATP offshore helicopter pilots fly 60 minutes out to a platform and then decide the wind is coming from the wrong direction so they can't land, and then fly 60 minutes back to the starting point.
And I've seen many ATP offshore helicopter pilots hit the GA button in a 76 at (or more often after) the DH in IMC on an OEI ILS approach, and the outcome is virtually certain from that point. Airspeed bleeds off, climb performance bleeds off, helicopter pitches up, then heads tail first towards the ground. They have a final big clue to help them out, the gear up warning audio comes on. What do you think they do most of the time? Nothing but cancel the audio, and then both crew thinking "what do I do now". Relying on the magic button to do all the work for them doesn't work in this flight critical situation, because it's not designed to do what they're asking it to do. The systems knowledge is just not there. These are the things I see in the simulator, if the same malfunction happened in real life do you think the outcome would be the same? Something is fundamentally wrong here with the training that they've undertaken to get to that point.
Of all the hair-brain things I've seen helicopter pilots do in the simulator, I've never seen a crew put a 76 in the water in response to an AFCS malfunction. With regards to a ditching decision for whatever reason, I don't remember a situation where a crew ditched a helicopter un-necessarily. The vast majority of bad decisions are made in continuing to fly when they should be ditching. So I would be staggered if it turned out this crew ditched un-neccessarily, because I just don't see this outcome in training.
I find the guys who've had some solid single pilot time, generally, can at least fly a compass heading if the GPS goes belly up, and they can read a map, and if they happen to find themselves temporarily geographically unaware they have the savvy to come up with a plan to get themselves found again. Because when you're flying alone you have to be able to do all this by yourself. This is the sort of airmanship and skill sets that builds a solid foundation for the button pushing offshore airline environment. Because a lot of multi-crew flying I see, neither pilot has any idea once a deviation from plan vanilla becomes necessary.
Last edited by gulliBell; 29th Feb 2016 at 11:55.