Almost died in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday..

[dumboffshorehand]

Thanks for the wonderful experience!

Cold front blows through, pilot picks up passengers at platform, pilot takes off. 10 minutes into flight he is getting lower and lower and visibility is horrible. Pilot flies 150MPH into fog bank, pilot scares all passengers on board and banks helicopter about 30 feet off of the Gulf at high rate of speed. Death was certain but the retard turned back into the sun and regained his bearings somehow. But what do I know? I'm just a passenger.



I hope most of you considering working in the GOM reconsider ... you will be asked to do the impossible and take extreme risk in a single engine aircraft over open ocean with a full load of cargo and passengers. Pressure to perform to please the oil company, humans are the cheapest thing in the oil industry.

[Gordy]

Cue.....SM

[Tourist]

This does beg the question:

How do you know that you were near death?

[OvertHawk]

That guy has the writing style of a daily mail reporter!

does not sound nearly as exciting when you say - "Pilot encountered bad weather then turned back" does it?

"Death was certain"...... but somehow you survived?

[Horror box]

I will ask the obvious ones first

What type of aircraft were you in?
Could you read the instruments yourself from where you were sitting?
How do you know for sure the pilot was retarded?

[Jet Ranger]

.....and... you woke up! It was 8 AM.

[Aerobot]

Hey guys, let's slow down a little. Obviously this pilot scared his passengers. We're not allowed to do that. Sure, there was some hyperbole in the guy's report - he had been scared and that's how scared people write.

But instead of piling on the guy because he told on a pilot, let's take a minute to think about whether or not he was right to be scared.

[Epiphany]

Why am I not surprised?

[before landing check list]

Would having another engine helped in THAT scenario?

[darrenphughes]

I didn't realize I had accidentally stumbled onto JustHelicopters. Senior Pilot, can you please moderate this tripe off out of our "Professional Pilot" forum. It's degrading the integrity of our information haven to have idiots like this signing up new accounts just to trash one side of the industry.

[Decredenza]

I agree with Aerobot. One should look at it as a correctable error if the passengers are frightened, regardless of the inherent safety of the flight.

Its too bad that dumboffshorehand had that experience. One has to wonder if it was the first time and if there was any communication post event to try and make things better.

[n5296s]

This is a very disappointing thread. Here we are at 10 posts and nobody has bashed Robinson yet. Come on guys, wake up!

[Epiphany]

Would having another engine helped in THAT scenario?

Yes because the aircraft would probably have been at 3000 feet IFR with the pilots both drinking coffee and the passengers asleep.

[JimL]

Most reluctantly I post on this thread.

We need to cut this guy some slack; if he has just been a passenger in an inadvertent entry into IMC incident, it was likely to have been almost as traumatic an experience as the pilot's.

The response that he has received is quite amazing bearing in mind that he was faultless. Perhaps we need to take notice of the recent speech by Matt Zuccaro reproduced at this site:

HAI President Message –

Epiphany is quite correct that there is a relationship between trying to fly beneath the weather and the number of engines.

It would be interesting to see if the pilot filed a confidential report.

Jim

[Islandcrazy]

Lets Help the Guy Out

If this guy was as scared during the flight as he is saying, he is going to tell everyone who will listen to him about his experience. It would be good if he could obtain a helpful and professional response to his enquiry/comment rather than attacking him. Otherwise he will just add this to his complaint / experience.

I am sure a local GOM pilot will be able to address some of his fears and concerns and make him feel a bit better about what happened, maybe even the driver who scared the &*^% out of him. He probably doesnt know much...... but he's giving us an opportunity here.

Lets play nice.

[EddieHeli]

darrenphughes - were you the pilot by any chance?

[darrenphughes]

No, I'm off right now. Going back on hitch on Friday.

I don't believe this event took place. Not that it couldn't take place. But I believe this guy is a troll of the type we see on JH. This is not the place to report this if he's for real. He needs to report it to his supervisor or the safety officer in his company and they'll handle it from there.





The original (edited) opening post included the operator plus the aircraft type, call sign and N number. I removed identifying details for obvious reasons, and checked the poster's details to verify his location is where he says.

Since this isn't JH, I hoped for a reasonable and structured debate: maybe you should respond along those lines?

SP

[EddieHeli]

Since this isn't JH, I hoped for a reasonable and structured debate: maybe you should respond along those lines?

I didn't realize I had accidentally stumbled onto JustHelicopters. Senior Pilot, can you please moderate this tripe off out of our "Professional Pilot" forum. It's degrading the integrity of our information haven to have idiots like this signing up new accounts just to trash one side of the industry.

Really !!!!

[darrenphughes]

The original (edited) opening post included the operator plus the aircraft type, call sign and N number. I removed identifying details for obvious reasons, and checked the poster's details to verify his location is where he says.

Since this isn't JH, I hoped for a reasonable and structured debate: maybe you should respond along those lines?

SP

So some random guy comes onto the forum with all that information and you don't completely delete the post??? Also, where was your little love note in the original post to show that you had at least done what little you did?

What is left to be discussed about the statement from a frightened passenger on the situation. This is a forum for professionals with informed and educated opinions and observations. This flaming post if it belongs here at all, belongs somewhere like Jetblast, or because the post maybe nothing but a bad attempt to draw out a single versus multi engine discussion, it should be dumped into the many similar topics I'm sure are lying around from a later date.

How could you possibly imagine a structured reasonable debate could come from such a loaded post?

[Aerobot]

I didn't get that out of it at all. The passenger is not some random guy - SP verified that if the guy is a fraud at least he's a well-informed one. Hard to believe that someone would go to the trouble to get a legitimate N-number and operator and post from an IP address in the proper region if he were creating an elaborate fraud intended to stir up trouble.

And I saw nothing in the passenger's post that had anything to do with a single-versus-multi discussion; he was talking about getting scared by a pilot's going IIMC.

I also don't think anything productive is being served by implying that he should not bother us here because he's not a professional with informed and educated opinions and observations. You've as much as said, "we're pilots, you're not, so you're not worth our time. Go away."

Obviously, SP thought that the passenger's concerns were legitimate enough to warrant inclusion in our august collection of educated, informed, professional pilots. I think the benefit of the doubt is in order.