Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

The NTSB has finally issued their report (attached) on the 12/29/2022 helicopter crash that resulted in 4 fatalities at Walter’s West Delta 106 A platform. The NTSB report on the Huntington Beach pipeline spill took a comparable amount of time (26 months) to complete. By comparison, the lengthy and complex National Commission, BOEMRE, Chief Counsel, and NAE reports on the Macondo blowout were published 6 to to 17 months after the well was shut-in.

The gist of the NTSB’s findings is pasted below.

The report summarizes operations standards, but does not consider the associated operator/contractor safety management systems that are intended to prevent such incidents. The report notes that:

Was the contractor/operator aware of these deviations from company policy? Should they have been?

The report implies that human (pilot) error was the cause of the dynamic rollover, but fails to assess the organizational controls that are intended to prevent such errors. How was a pilot with 1667.8 flight hours (1343.8 as the PIC), who had made 23 trips to this platform, repeatedly making fundamental positioning and takeoff errors?

The report also notes that:

This is interesting wording given that the perimeter light was identified as the pivot point, one of the 3 requirements for a dynamic rollover. Why wasn’t that violation observed by the operator/contractor and corrected? What helideck inspection procedures were in place? Did NTSB consider the fragmented regulatory regime for helicopter safety, particularly with regard to helidecks?

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