Hi Steve
When I mentioned what we did in Bristow it was of course latterly, perhaps only in this decade, due to lessons learnt from wrong deck landings in the past. So I was not implying that Bristow had never had a wrong deck landing or other major cockup such as you mention. We have had loads!
I had one myself in the early 80s as a year 1 copilot on the S61. We had to fly to a semi sub under tow, weather was not too good. And of course navigating by a Decca roll.
So we arrived in the vicinity of where we thought the rig would be (projecting forward its previously reported position using track, speed and time) and there was a radar return. We descended through cloud and became VMC at maybe 500' with the rig under tow in front of us. We called them up, they answered, and we landed. Then we got the call with the different voice "would the aircraft just landed on our heli deck unannounced kindly identify itself?" Oops! Wrong rig. The correct rig, also under tow, was a couple of miles away. It was what Kevin would have described as "SO UNFAIR!" But of course in those days it wasn't a big deal, we just got a bit of a muttering from the chief pilot on return and heard nothing more about it.
That was the moment that I realised that when you look at a rig, press transmit to get deck availability, get a reply, it is a very alluring and powerful indicator to the psyche that the rig you are looking at is the correct one.
But that was then, and now we have Gps- powered FMS and (since the demise of the Trimble) easy entry of waypoints. There seems less excuse now but nevertheless it happens. And so any report worth it's salt would investigate why the crew didn't put the "To" waypoint in. Was it a one off? If so, why? Was it a company culture thing? And in the case of the 139, having the destination waypoint in, why didn't they use the information? We have no idea. All we know is that the pilots screwed up. Not in the slightest bit useful.