My, we are being defensive. Of course there are far fewer pressures offshore in comparison where the role is nowhere near as demanding as night formation NVG - everything is in the Ops Manual agreed by oil company which means PIC can simply refuse to do flight using manual as defence which should include qualification, currency and pairing. Ok, so depends on the maturity of the oil company's local management and aviation advice - and the intervention from CO and ASO equivalent to back you up if necessary.
My point about ASO was that he had a new CO to convince on 13/14 Jan about the execution of the flight. Of course CO was possibly under pressure from Brig Gen to continue operating as normal - though CO did brief his new unit not to push it. Just cruel, tragic and ironic that Sanborn relieved CO in order to, in his words, prevent a mishap.
Last thing both operator and oil company want to hear after an offshore incident, accident is "but I thought I was helping the customer" (with the short cut, failure to follow SOP etc). I was just trying to get a feel if that had permeated through to the military. I mention it 'cus an old Vietnam pilot I knew had a simple rule from moons ago - 3 things wrong prior to pulling power, cancel the mission, think again. A simplified version of how to avoid lining up the holes in the Swiss cheese.
Last edited by tistisnot; 3rd Nov 2016 at 01:16.
Reason: gramma'