There has been a number of high profile and avoidable helicopter accidents in Scotland in recent years, including sixteen people killed in the North Sea Super Puma helicopter crash on 1 April 2009 and the four killed in the Shetland Super Puma accident on 23 August 2013. Yes, it is clear that more needs to be done to prevent these workplace transport accidents.
As such it is encouraging to see that the UK Civil Aviation Authority has put forward a number of proposals to help prevent such tragic and avoidable helicopter accidents from occurring in the future.
Included in the proposals is the idea that helicopters would be equipped with "full crashworthy systems technology" to reduce the risk of in-flight fires, and that they would be prevented from flying to vacant rigs unless they had the capability to fly on one engine in the event of loss of power to another - all unattended 116 offshore installations in the UK would be affected.
"The safety of the offshore flying has increased considerably over the past year," commented, Mark Swan, CAA Director of Safety and Airspace.
"One area we want to focus on specifically is flights to unattended installations which, because there may be no one on the rig to assist following an accident, don't have the same level of safety as manned rigs. We will therefore progress this work as a priority to ensure offshore workers flying to these installations have the highest levels of safety possible."
If you would like to claim compensation for personal injury sustained in a helicopter accident or indeed any other type of workplace transport accident click here for more from Thompsons , Scotland's leading personal injury solicitor firm.
