All that fancy kit, and seemingly using aircraft modes because they CAN be used, rather than using the safest mode to achieve the safest outcome. Whats wrong with looking at a chart, having a published inbound heading with respect to terrain/obstacles and flying an OBS approach, 3nm 1000ft, 2nm 700ft, 1nm 400ft, and either a sensible MDA/H, or in SAR world, continuing to a reduced MDH/auto-hover. All this flying along at 200ft still IMC using radar, then apparently ignoring radar returns(!) seems bonkers and totally unnecessary. Maybe they were clear of cloud, but they were essentially IMC. It seems such an unnecessary loss of life, especially for the poor radar operator, who whilst 'unlicensed' from a flight crew perspective, seemed to have the best situational awareness of the immediate danger.
Addition: I don't doubt that it CAN be done safely, of course it can, and has been for years, and remains bread and butter for many of you, but, it can't be the safest way of achieving the objective of landing at a known helipad for a routine fuel stop. At the very least, have a moving map showing actual OS data or marine cartography, that would immediately depict something as substantial as and island when flying 200ft over water. You can get that for $100 on an iPad, and sadly that alone when referenced against the radar return could have prevented this tragedy.
Last edited by SARWannabe; 16th Apr 2017 at 10:14.