When profit trumps safety

It's a tragedy in itself that a tragedy has to happen for change to occur.

I'm sure you all remember where you were or what you were doing when you heard of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. I'm sure you remember where you were when the devastation of the Haiti earthquake finally set in and I'm sure you remember where you were when Flight 491, a Cougar Sikorsky S92 helicopter, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean last March killing 18 of our offshore workers.

It's been a year now.

There has been an inquiry, numerous media reports and speculation, but what has changed?

Well, since the inquiry there have been a temporary halt to night flights and upgrades to the survival suits that all men and women now wear when flying to the offshore. Faster emergency response times and improvements to the helicopter interiors will be next on the priority list Cougar promises - in hopes of preventing another crash of ever happening again.

So what went wrong? Especially since before the crash the S92 was advertised as the safest helicopter in the world.

I'm not naive to think that the potential isn't always there to crash - even commercial flights have to deal with that uncertainty every time they take to the air.

However, what bothers me the most is the recent findings that the helicopter manufacturer knew more than six months earlier about the gearbox problem that caused the S92 to crash on March 12, 2009.

It worries me that big profits and business growth has somehow taken over a company's ability to provide safety to their workers. Regardless of whether a person works offshore or at a construction site at a nearby building - they deserve to have the very best in safety equipment and training available to them.

Accidents, in the air, on the street or in the workplace don't just happen; they are caused. To those big companies who know about problems and don't report them to the proper authorities or who look to profits over people - prepare and prevent, don't repair and repent.