CharlieOneSix wrote: ↑Sat Jan 29, 2022 2:53 pm
In my time we used to stop when the wind across the deck was 60kts as after that it was too iffy getting the pax to walk across the deck to the helicopter. ey are but not much chance in waves of 6.5 metres. That’s why when those conditions prevailed I preferred IMC days so I couldn’t see the sea state enroute.
I remember a day during a cross-deck shuttle between Piper A and Bredford Dolphin, when I was the helicopter controller for the mid-Northern North Sea bit(s) between Bristow Forties and Brent Log, callsign Bredford Traffic 122.45, when a BA 61 on the Piper deck had to suddenly pull pitch during a monstrous gust between disembarking a load of bears and embarking the next. No flight attendants in those days. The co-Joe was on the lower bit of the airstair when this happened!
The 61 explained to me that they had to bugger off to ABZ as the deck limit was crazily beyond limits. Fair enough. Gimme yer departure message and it will be telexed in the usual way, was my viewpoint on that.
Meanwhile, other **** was going on. Our offshore based 212, which was part of the shift-change shuttle and had already bugged out due wx, had put out a Mayday with a chip light. He was flogging hard against the severe headwind at lowest of low level, and so only intermittently audible. I was his only contact with humanity. Single pilot IFR was normal in those days. Cruel, but normal.
I had my head pressed hard against the ParkAir radio to listen to Ced as I vectored in a Bristow 61, which was inbound from Beryl, to close in to Ced's track on a slightly different ADN radial. Those 61s didn't have SAR gear/capability, but it's really useful to have one in the vicinity of a (potential) ditching, for several reasons.
Then I got a call from the admin people of Bredford Dolphin, where I was was based, that the barge was several people over the lifeboat allocation due to the disruption of the shuttle. Big legal thing and very big Safety thing. Cannot be ignored or disregarded.
I asked the empty 61 to come back and take a dozen or so bears to the beach for the afore-mentioned reason. Graciously, as one might expect of a BEACopter guy with plenty of fuel, he accepted even though he himself had had a very nasty fright and his left-seater might actually have had shitfilled socks.
The storm was screaming, but was within the then crazy limits over the deck of 60kts.
I had my head squeezed against the speaker of the Parkair radio when I became vaguely aware that someone was bursting through the door of the pilothouse (bridge) which was my workstation. I had already cleared the 61 to land on, but my real concern was the poor bugger in the 212, all alone in a horrible storm punching his way through all kinds of shitn corruption struggling to make his way to Longside or to mebbe all the way Furrybootz.
I, meanwhile, was communicating with all kinds of people to try to get Kinloss to launch assets to assist Ced and to contact all, but only all relevant all ships, on Ch16 to assist in any potential way and blethering with both Piper and Claymore to help with telecomms etc etc. Also, having to explain the the platform managers, of which there were several, why I had necessarily cancelled the shift change. Busy bunny was I. Very busy, though never frantic.
Then, in all the noise and mayhem of five radios babbling and the storm shrieking and the noise of a 61 hovering to land on the immediately adjacent deck, the HLO burst in to the pilothouse yelling something --- just as there was a horrible graunching noise from outside.
The BA61 had landed gear-up!
It more or less bounced as the pilot realised what he was doing. I saw that through the door opened by the hapless HLO, who had seen the gear-up condition and had been yelling at me on his Motorola Marine VHF Ch 6 walkietakie to wave off the landing.
I should explain that in those days and "HLO" was a bit of a joke. He had no training whatsoever. He was a subcontrator hireling from Group4 or Securicor whose job was to search the baggage of shore-bound bears to confiscate stolen tools and other goodies.
The poor sod had seen what was happening and had been yelling at me in a very loud noise environment on his headsetless walkietakie at me to tell the 61 to go-around.
I did not hear him. I couldn't have heard him, physically.
Scratch two pilots' career improvement prospects, pro tem. Temporarily, fortunately.
I wrote a brilliant official Report, which did not exclude or exonerate my own part in the causal web of the accident; and which was much lauded by everyone who read it.
I too was 'let off' thanks to Reports written and testified to by others.
The BA guys went on the lead happy lives, as did Ced of BEAS/Bristow, as did I.
No bears were hurt in the making of this entirely true story.
