It’s been three months since Sikorsky announced that its S-92 rig approach system has gone into operation in the Gulf of Mexico with oil and gas transport provider PHI, and here at the show, the airframer is providing demonstrations of the safety enhancement. “Probably the hardest thing we ask the commercial helicopter pilot to do is the offshore approach,” said Ronald Doeppner, chief research and developmental pilot and technical fellow for the Stratford, Conn.-based OEM. “It’s dark outside, it’s a stormy night, they put a 70-foot circle in the side of a skyscraper and they expect you to go land there with revenue passengers. They’ve been doing this for over 20 years and doing it safely, but it’s hard.”
The story of the rig approach began seven years ago with a request from PHI, according to Doeppner, who was involved in the program from the beginning. “They said “make it easier,” he recalled. “That’s a great request. They didn’t tell us how, they didn’t tell us to do this; they just said make it easier.”
