Reading some of the many replies here I wonder how many North Sea pilots have ever learnt to fly on the R22?

Compared to the nice comfortable well equipped helicopters that ply the rigs the R22 is not very forgiving if you take your eye off the ball.

YOP Answer: All of the Bristow Cadet pilots from 1983 onwards and quite a few others I would imagine. I learned on the Bell 47, also not forgiving if one takes ones "eye off the ball" like most singles actually. What is your point?

The Bell 47 is one of the most forgiving helicopters. Easy to fly but very slow.

Great blade inertia.

A decent instructor will do an auto to ground,pull the collective and do a 360 before landing again.

Try that in the Robbo:ok:

I got my ticket with a muster pilot in Perth Australia late 80's.
(Great Northern Helicopters)

Those guys can push the machine to the edge and more but also demonstrate how it will bite you.

What we have now in fixed and rotory ops are machine minders.

HC, the Sea King can fly for 5 and a bit hours at one go and many of our military SAR missions last at least this long (not least very long and tedious searches where attention is usually outside the cockpit).

Even on these missions (including out to 250nm W of Ireland) the attention getter is more than sufficient to do what it says on the tin and let the pilot know something has decoupled. Maybe it is just down to training - don't NS pilots have a cycle of activity that they utilise in the cockpit (lookout, attitude, instruments for example)?

Crab - I think a lot of this does go back to training basics. Effectively in the military in the UK we have one training system and set of standards. I know the three services all do their own thing to a degree, but CFS has managed to maintain an overall control and develop standards and techniques that are accepted as “the way its done”. For the most part they are very good, well tested and developed through experience and by those who will and have actually used them. The initial training is the same for pretty much all pilots, so they have had the benefit of a shared awareness of techniques and the correct way to do things from the start. In short the military system has maintained full control of quality throughout the pipeline.
This is of course not the way at all in any civilian operation. Pilots are coming in from any number of training organisations who are to a greater or lesser degree more concerned with making money than producing a standard product. That is not their fault and maybe a little harsh or oversimplified, but it is the reality. Part of the problem is “what is the product?” A PPL or CPL who is just paying for their license for fun? Or an offshore pilot? Or what else? Who cares - as long as they pay! By the time they arrive at the offshore operator and have started a type rating it is too bloody late to stop the process if they are very weak. Perhaps far more time needs to be spent on real training when a new pilot comes into a company, and not just on a type rating course. The tendency today is for a type rating to be completed that will more than likely include nothing at all to do with offshore flying and is little more than a series of ticking exercise boxes. Then they are sent to the companies and released to line training (read - on the job training). We almost need to be teaching them again from the start when they come in and making sure they have all the basics covered first. Unfortunately there is no time to do this. My experience has been that some (not all) are arriving with very little real understanding of even the basics of airmanship, decision making or captaincy let alone handling, then are released to line training unable really to fly properly. They have themselves been taught by an instructor with 150hrs from the same school, who has just passed his CPL who has no experience and ability to pass on anything more than the handbook. This manifests itself into the development of all sorts of godawful bad habits. Ten years down the line - what do we have? That is how a culture is built.
The further contracting out of training (type ratings) further detaches the company from a vital check on the quality of their pilots at a critical point in their preparation and development and further degrades the long term culture if we are not very careful.
There needs to be somewhere in the pipeline a far more comprehensive preparation for offshore flying. They complete an R22 type rating and some very basic flying at their first school, maybe then build hours in the circuit teaching another brand new pilot, they then go straight to an S92 rating and fly offshore. Perhaps somewhere in between there needs to be a type of role training completed by another school?

This thread is in danger of getting dragged into the realms of mil v civilian by the usual suspects. It doesn't matter what your organisation's training system (aircraft or synthetic), standards or operating procedures are these type of accidents will continue to happen. This applies to both military and civilian worlds, fixed wing and rotary. You can bang on all day about the pros and cons of various autopilot systems and the way in which they are utilised but so long as there is a human interface there is always scope for error. It is probably feasible to make an aircraft (almost) 100% safe but the amount of development and the operational costs would prohibit such a beast. The bottom line is that aviation involves risk, the level of risk is intrinsically linked with cost/profit (read cost for military ops). If it were deemed unacceptable for the occasional fatality occur then there would be a sea change in the way we aviate, this isn't going to happen. Many lessons will be learned from this incident once the AAIB's full findings are released. This may or may not prevent a similar incident in the future. What it will do is stimulate further discussion and help to move aviation in general on to a better and safer place.

Are you seriously suggesting that both of the pilots attention would be anywhere else but monitoring the instruments at that stage of an IMC approach?
Do you know of a distraction they experienced?
Or is it a tragic and painful reminder of how serious this job can get and how much effort is required to effectively monitor after long days on 'mundane' tasks as things go 'pear-shaped' v quickly.
Only a distraction would take my eyes of the ball - so to speak - so I am waiting to hear what happened in the cockpit that day........

26500 - I think you should type that out and send it to the various reviews into NS operations that are taking place. Nail on the head. :D:D:D

The problem with that is that it will be filed along withe the suggestion for a better Christmas party!
It is an all or nothing idea. All operators must do it or none will do it as it requires spending more money and time on training. In addition they must all do the same level of training, with very clearly defined accepted standards and training directives. Some companies today will be in a better position others to do such training. It would require substantial classroom and aircraft training as well as a good deal more time. Maybe several weeks or more. There are only two ways of getting that to happen. Either the customer makes it happen or the CAA’s make it happen. It must then be independently monitored to ensure no corner cutting, LEANing or in our speak - penny pinching.

However, I wonder what the annual hours of a typical mil Sar pilot is?

Anyway, you are pretty much reinforcing my point - when you are flying for 5+ hrs its 5+ hrs of being busy with tasks such as visual searches, and each flight is likely to be quite different. This keeps your state of arousal up and even if you are looking outside, you are paying attention and will probably see the mode has dropped out.

For oil and gas, hours can be spent in the cruise doing the same old same old, with very little to do or think about. This inevitably leads to a low arousal state, inattention to the task in hand (such as it is) and a retreat into one's own thoughts, or discussion with one's colleague about how bad management is etc. This is a real phenomena so no point in denying it!

I'm not of course suggesting that the thread-subject accident crew were being inattentive during the approach. I'm sure they were giving it their full attention, but unfortunately not giving any attention to their airspeed for some strange reason.

But anyway, back to the original point which is that your comment that you don't need an aural attention getter for unexpected AP mode changes, is unproductive and unhelpful. Not everyone is as perfect as you are!

I don't know the SK at all, but by the sound of it, Crab is referring to captions/warning lights, in the normal line of sight, that come ON when a mode decouples, drawing your attention even if you are not immediately looking at them.

The L2 and 225 have small green captions at the top of the display screens that simply go OFF when a mode decouples, with nothing more than a small brown flashing box for a few seconds to draw the eye (which it doesn't) and reveal that something has changed.

The SK system seems designed to warn if something changes, the L2/225 (usually good in that respect) is not. That's why an aural warning would help immensely.

Ye Old Pilot, there are plenty of informative posts on this thread, from people with real industry experience who genuinely want to discuss a serious and tragic accident. And then there are off-topic posts about mustering and Bell47s and Robbies and how this is really about a deterioration in hand flying skills.

From what we know so far, this accident is primarily about mismanaging the power during an approach and not properly using the automatics of a sophisticated aircraft. PLEASE stop posting guff.

TT

Well said TT.

I am going to maintain that this has a large financial element, so here is the question. How does one convince management/CAA/Customers of the intangibles of our industry these days when it comes to safety?
All those invisible traps that are impossible to explain to the economist or CEO who is used to a non aviation management. How can they understand the need for a safety culture that costs when they haven’t grown up with it? When do you know you it is going wrong? These are all very difficult to quantify unless one has a real understanding of aviation. How can you convince them that we need to do more when it is not mandated by an authority? How can you convince them that the offshore rotary world is not he same as fixed wing airline flying? Different regulations need to be in place. They need to start over and understand what the problem is. Right now I don’t believe anyone really shows an understanding of the problem other than helicopters are hitting the water. Is it fatigue? Is it complacency? Is it lack of training? Is it lack of supervision? Is it lack of leadership? Is it the wrong people doing the job? Is it an overly complicated and fragmented industry and company structure? I don’t have any answers at all but I do know what some of the questions are. Those with more info than me should be able to join up the rest of the dots.
This is not in any danger of turning mil vs civ again, but we must look at who does what well and try and learn from it. Lets not limit it to mil vs civ, but lets go much further. Look at other industries, other countries, other cultures other operators. Who is honestly doing it best and why? Forget pure statistics, look at reality and use common sense. Copying a Norwegian system is a long way from the ideal solution. They have just had a deal more luck. As that rather tacky CRM soundbite goes “focus on what is right - not who is right”.

Going by the majority of Ye Olde Pilot's posts in other topics, it's just to stir things up. :=

HC, your assertions that because I only fly 300 hours a year instead of 1000 (or whatever the NS limit is) my opinion is null an void is rather disappointing and possibly an indicator towards what may be the problem in the NS ie acceptance of poor ergonomics, working schedules and routines and a tedious task.

My point was (and it appears to be borne out by obnoxio's comment) that a correctly designed visual warning is better than a poorly implemented one and at least as good as an average audio warning that people tune out because it happens often (a bit like the wife's nagging) - isn't designing a cockpit to be functional and efficient the science of ergonomics? It would sometimes appear that not all helicopter manufacturers have a department that covers this discipline!

Crab and HC,

Let's put away the handbags now and concentrate on the real matter in hand.

26500 has made two extremely good, pertinent posts, which sum up the current position in a nutshell. Like him, I don't have the answers, but by asking the correct questions, maybe we will get someway towards the right answers. Those of you out there with the 'brains of planets' may have some of the answers, but it may well boil down to the correct answers coming from the shop floor line pilots. Who knows, but until we figure out the right questions, to which 26500 has made a great start, we won't get the solutions we seek.

bondu

Mmmh, a disappointingly pilot-centric post.

1st accident maintenance issue.
2nd accident pilot and operations issue.
3rd accident design issue un-trapped by maintenance
4th accident design issue un-trapped by maintenance
5th accident pilot and operations issue.

So 2 out of 5 are something to do with the pilots. Why on earth would you think the solution to all ills therefore lies with the pilots?

Its disappointing though not too surprising that you can't see the fundamental difference between the roles.

For clarity, I am not proposing an aural warning that sounds every time a mode is no longer engaged (as per the 92, it seems), rather a warning that sounds when a mode disengages not due to pilot action. On the 225 there is a red flashing "WARN" attention getter at face level associated with red CWP warnings, but this is supplemented with a "boink" noise that is not too obtrusive but makes you look at times of low arousal. This is on the basis that red warnings require immediate pilot attention and probably action. An un-commanded disengagement of an autopilot mode also requires immediate pilot action but is not only less obvious visually, but also is not accompanied by the "boink". That is an HMI inconsistency.

What I find surprising is that you think all military missions are fraught with danger and therefore keep the crew in some super-aroused state - we have had plenty of crews nod off or operate in very low arousal states, usually on the return from a night job when all the exciting bit is over.

You seem to be of the opinion that if you haven't been to the NS you can't have an opinion on operations there - helicopter flying is helicopter flying and long, boring transits are a feature of lots of operations, not just the NS.

I thoroughly agree with 26500's post but won't make further comments in case I am accused of inciting mil vs civ by some sensitive souls;)