79 North Sea safety

Submitted by British Air Line Pilots’ Association

Congress welcomes the speed of the Air Accident Investigation Branch’s initial response into the Super Puma fatal accident, calls on the helicopter industry to implement the initial recommendations on the AS332L2 helicopter forthwith and pledges the support of all affiliates in pursuing the highest standards of safety in the North Sea.

Congress believes that we all need to be ever-vigilant and can never take flight safety for granted. Whilst it welcomes the establishment by the Oil and Gas Industry of a helicopter accident task group, Congress notes with concern that it will be of relatively narrow composition with direct input neither from the trade unions that represent the very people who have their safety inexorably linked to that of helicopters nor from independent flight safety experts.

Congress believes that there should be openness and transparency in all offshore safety-related activity. Therefore in the wake of this particular tragedy, but more generally in the light of the increasingly commercially competitive environment of the oil and gas supply industry, it calls on politicians in Westminster and Holyrood to convene a high-level summit involving the broadest range of interests to thoroughly understand the current safety regime in the North Sea in general and the helicopter industry in particular, and to identify whether there are risks to that regime.