LIVING THE DREAM Part 2: Planning and Pax

Part 2: Planning and Pax

- JANNIE MATTHYSEN

This might be a problem. I just gulped my second cup of coffee for the morning and I realised with a shock that I'm going to spend the next four hours in the cockpit! Rookie mistake. There's still an hour or two before our 06:30 departure time to make amends - so here's hoping for the best.

MY SCHEDULED FLIGHT for the day is to the furthest offshore vessel that we serve in the Gulf of Mexico - perfect profile for the lumbering S-92. It's a straight-line 225NM flight, followed by about 20 minutes on deck, and then the seemingly longer flight back. We're often assigned another stop or two along the way, but today is just straight out and back.

It should be easy. Unless things change, and there's always a good chance of that.

Our company policy stipulates that all S-92s carry return fuel. This means that we must be able to fly 225NM to our destination, execute a missed approach, and then return to base and land with a 30-minute reserve. This seems like a great plan in good weather, but when flying IFR, we depart on a SID (Standard Instrument Departure), plan for an offshore IFR approach / missed approach, and return to base while allowing for yet another approach procedure. All these fuel requirements quickly add up, leaving our standard fuel capacity of around 5,100lbs a little marginal on these longer flights. Fortunately, we have the option of installing internal auxiliary tanks – for our flight today, we have one 210 USG tank installed in the passenger cabin, but it does require three of our 19 passenger seats to be sacrificed.

Our destination drillship has been anchored in the same spot for the past few months and this mission has been flown successfully many times by simply extracting our route from one of the two FMSs (Flight Management Systems).