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1. Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 03-Oct-2024 07:33:38 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

   in reply to

   While I'm talking about the tenor of this whole affair in the industry, it's worth catching you up on part of why the fuddyduddies aren't too happy to see light aircraft swarming around. Light helicopters are seen as death traps, such that our company doesn't even let us ride them without having a pre-buy done, and tapping in our very old school apache pilot to give them a test flight. (of course, the caveat here is that they're still better than having nothing at all, for some of these cases, so it's good to have these people helping out.)

   Basically, Helo flying is even MORE expensive than plane flight, which means the guys doing it for fun simply can't afford to do it as much. **That means they're less experienced, less practiced at dealing with emergencies from the get-go, and have only ever flown within the narrow confines of their local stomping grounds and airspace. Top it all off with the fact that for many, bereft of an overseer like the Civil Air Patrol helping to unify these rescue ops, a whole bunch of these guys are probably doing SAR for the first time in their life, just winging it and hoping for the best.

   But still, having just them is better than having nothing at all.