{"id":4519,"date":"2008-09-30T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/?p=4519"},"modified":"2008-09-30T08:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-30T08:45:00","slug":"cruise-weekly-comment-helicopter-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2008\/09\/cruise-weekly-comment-helicopter-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruise Weekly Comment: Helicopter Crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 200px; cursor: pointer;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/App_Themes\/cruiseweekly\/images\/logo.gif\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/\">Cruise W<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/cruiseweekly.com.au\/\">eekly<\/a> \u2013  Comment by Roderick Eime<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thumbs.fotopic.net\/151053000554.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;\" src=\"http:\/\/thumbs.fotopic.net\/151053000554.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>I must admit that news of a second helicopter crash in the Kimberley inside two weeks has given me some goose bumps. I flew with Slingair, the first to lose their machine in a quadruple fatality over the Bungle Bungles, on a fixed wing charter after a week aboard <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">True North<\/span> where I made numerous flights in their now sunken Bell 407.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">True North<\/span>&#8216;s machine was like brand new to me and flew faultlessly throughout the cruise. All passengers wore automatically-inflating life jackets and the great big doors were easy to get in and out of. Thankfully, no one lost their lives in what must have been a hair-raising event. There is some mystery however, as to why the flotation devices attached to the landing gear did not activate and an investigation is now under way.<\/p>\n<p>So what does this mean for the many expedition vessels that employ helicopters either onboard or as optional flight-seeing tours? Helicopters add an extra dimension to any cruise experience and are invaluable on many polar itineraries.<\/p>\n<p>There is a degree of risk assessment in any form of travel and helicopters are nowhere near the top of any &#8216;most dangerous transport&#8217; list. Statistics are traditionally dominated by the rattly minibus and motorcycle, even crossing the road rates way up there, especially in SE Asia, Africa and the sub-continent. I, for one, will continue to fly in helicopters and light aircraft knowing that the taxi ride to the airport will constitute the single highest risk factor on any given trip.<\/p>\n<p>No matter where you are or what you&#8217;re doing, assess the risk, enjoy yourself and travel safely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cruise Weekly \u2013 Comment by Roderick Eime I must admit that news of a second helicopter crash in the Kimberley inside two weeks has given me some goose bumps. I flew with Slingair, the first to lose their machine in a quadruple fatality over the Bungle Bungles, on a fixed wing charter after a week [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[324],"class_list":["post-4519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-cruise-weekly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}