Dear Maximum,
I really don't like to say things without knowing what I am talking about, and this is no exception.
I have a substantial amount of High Performance Jet time, old ones and new ones (Old Lears, Sabre and the New Hawker 400's faster, less equipped and with worse handling characteristcs than the Large Transport Acft you talk about)
without all the help and planning airline pilots get, internationally, (ever landed a jet, bad WX at MHTG, MMJA, MGGT, MMTN) into airports you wouldn't dream to put a 737 into, have flown and experienced "awful WX, sistem failures and engine failures (broken gears in acc gear box) at 8 miles a minute", you talk about.
all of this is nothing compared to a day fighting fires, an ILS in a B412 in stormy WX, or Hot and Heavy operations at altitude in confined areas with only 12 people on board, or doing full touchdowns with a 5 millon dollar acft with an inexperienced new offshore SIC.
The reason why there is so many more accidents in helicopters compared to jets is because operations are much more difficult, require more skill, and most of all, a great deal of common sense and airmanship skills. Not much more to help you here except yourself, most heli pilots don't attend all those nice sim rides all the time, nor get all those nice tons of manuals full of stuff that someone else previously has thought in advance so I don't mess up.
No app charts into remote fields in South America, no TWR to tell you where the wind is from, and when is the last time you have seen a wire or antenna in the approach end of a runway? Most heli pilots don't have a nice fat company SOP's to decide for you when to go to your alternate, we can't go over the bad WX at FL370, most helicopters don't have WX radar, FMS's, and GPWS, we can't try an approach a couple of times and if unable divert to our alternate at "8 miles a minute"
You talk about failures, in helicopters you are lucky if you have a back up system at all, on the contrary Jets have in many instances triple redundancy. Engine failures are just a matter of proper CRM and procedure in most modern passenger ACFT today, for every accident caused by mechanical failure in airplanes there is about 10 in helicopters and trust me a thrust reverser deployment is nothing compared to a TR failure.
Sorry I stand by what I say because I have experienced being on both sides.
Last edited by BlenderPilot; 17th Sep 2003 at 11:14.