SAR S-92 Missing Ireland

[Search&Rescue]

Originally Posted by DOUBLE BOGEY

CRAB, this is not a court room. Its a discussion forum. From the information available, what I have posted is my personal opinion of how a perfectly serviceable all weather helicopter flying, what should be, a simple task of letting down over the ocean, flew straight into a obstacle 10 x the dimensions (not height) of the average O&G installation.

Not my place to criticise the crew but I believe we should not be afraid to sense the obvious here.

Take away the FLIR, the Rear Crew, the assumed additional expertise of the SAR crew and you have a Offshore ARA in its basic form.

A waypoint, a Radar Target (or several) and a vertical profile (CDFA). Backed up with a sensible Altitude/RADALT Bug response philosophy. Nothing else really needed and this is done every day by the O&G pilots.

I strongly re-emphasise that the merits of the CDFA (not utilised in this approach) would have saved them. However, I keep forgetting, this is Rotorheads and we don't really like silly, new rules that take away are ability to do exactly what we want when we want to do it.

I started on this thread pushing back against Helicomparitor. Now I am beginning to think, having read and seen all the data, his original point may indeed by valid.

DB

DB,

I am just curious and always willing to learn more... Could you please describe an ad-hoc CDFA the crew could have done instead of a traditional ARA and continued safely to Blacksod.