Help me knock down a nasty little rumour on PHI/rig flying

[Crusty Old Dude]

A former oil worker claimed that oil rig flying comprised of about "2200 missions a day" with "approximately 2 losses every month" that somehow involved ditching.

 

Okay, now I'm going to the source...the horses' collective mouths if you will...

 

what say ye?

[doanut99]

GOMer would be the man to talk to about this.

[Wally]

I think you source is low in estimating the average number of daily movements in the GoM, and overstimates the number of ditchings. If stated as forced/precautionary landings that grounded the aircraft, the number given might be close. Putting it in the water's unusual.

[Crusty Old Dude]

I think you source is low in estimating the average number of daily movements in the GoM, and overstimates the number of ditchings. If stated as forced/precautionary landings that grounded the aircraft, the number given might be close. Putting it in the water's unusual.

that's what I thought. It sounded hokey to me, and you'd think that those things would be making the news...

[Gomer Pylot]

As Bill O'Reilly proves daily, it's easy to pull numbers out of your... thin air, or somewhere. I don't have any hard numbers for movements in the GOM, but it's a lot. I don't know what 'missions' means, and you will never see that term used anywhere. A movement is a takeoff and landing, with a flight of whatever distance. None of the GOM companies, to the best of my knowledge, publish the number of flights they do, and the number of hours is pretty much a guess. 2200 movements is probably in the correct order of magnitude, but perhaps on the low side. The number of ditchings is lower than stated, and easily confirmed on the NTSB website. Any simple search there will give you the number of accidents over whatever period you want from the early 80s to last week. You won't see every accident there, though, because not everything has to be reported. But ditchings, which involve damage to aircraft (and they all do, usually while trying to recover the aircraft), are reported, and easily found. All serious accidents are there. The only thing missing is the time, and movements, without accidents. I have no idea how to find those numbers, because the guvmint does not require anyone to track them.