Posted on 09/03/2026 7:27:34 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Hundreds of North Sea workers are still too heavy for offshore helicopter travel less than two months before new rules come into force, BBC Scotland has learned.
From November they should weigh no more than 19st 7Ib (124.7kg) in their clothing and footwear, so they can be winched to safety in an emergency.
When the plans were announced by industry body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) last year, they said more than 2,200 workers were above that limit. New figures suggest up to 800 still exceed it.
Jobs could be lost as a result, and an occupational health expert said some had left the offshore industry rather than lose the weight.
However an employment law specialist said alternative onshore roles could also be explored by companies.
The new safe weight limit policy came after the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) warned that rescue winches - which are critical during offshore emergencies - cannot safely lift heavier people.
The 39st (249kg) maximum Coastguard rescue helicopter winch load is made up of the maximum clothed weight plus the average 14st (90.3kg) weight of a rescue worker, a 4st 7Ib (29kg) stretcher, and the 7Ib (5kg) kit.
OEUK said the average weight of offshore workers had risen by almost 1st 7Ib (10kg) since 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
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Ahhh...Free Republic.
Everyone takes a side based on their personal biases, then argues the points to death.
Are they European or African swallows?
I was not going to comment because It does not matter to me anymore. My offshore days are over but this is absurd. Some new child woke up to some new and alternate reality. Does the Coast Guard weigh all the people they rescue from ships? Of course not.
Back in the day of HUET training and North Sea survival training it was not uncommon to have people who simply would not fit in a gumby suit. I was 6-1 back then, about 250 and barely fit myself. I have seen guys who barely fit through the escape windows in the helicopter escape training. The subject of weight and helicopter hoists never came up.
There is a new sheriff in town and it isn’t us or anyone else with practical experience or much good sense, leave the rescue swimmer behind if you need the capacity, he should expect that and be picked up after. Happy I am out of the insanity and just pray I make it out of this world without becoming victim to it all.
Novel solution get a damn winch that can hoist more than 275 pounds.
In clothes and boots
That is one of the multiple considerations addressed in the video I left a link to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QgwWQ_Pg3A
Not quite everyone (it was me provided a link to a video of the man who created the rule explaining in some detail how it came to be) but I get your point.
Especially if it's aviation related. Sometimes I think it takes becoming a pilot to begin understanding how little you really know about flying. The vast majority of Freeper's aviation "experts" have never had their shirttail flown from a windsock and so have no idea the depth of their ignorance (but that minor detail doesn't diminish the fervency of their argument in the least).
“And shorter, lighter, cheap labor men from the third world.”
Guess they’ll head out to Somalia to recruit some skinnies to work the rigs.
Just get women to do it.
I would guess most of them put on more muscle working chores and jobs on the rig. No one there has much time to sit around and get fat, no one goes to a rig to have a sedentary vacation. Muscle is 5 times as dense as fat so it wont be as visually noticeable as a large fat spare tire of fat across the midsection.
Big men don’t get cold nearly as fast as small men, on the other hand.
But helicopter capability is key.
“”””My entire artillery unit was guys my size.””””
Unusual, I was in the artillery and never saw a guy your size, in fact I didn’t see one in the army at all that was your size.
“””””Novel solution get a damn winch that can hoist more than 275 pounds.”””””
See post 38, the wench is rated for 549 pounds.
That video really explains it, I have only listened to a few minutes but it seems to be about the entire artificial environment, sort of like a space station, the aviation and transportation, the beds, the mattresses, the stairs, and I guess the 50 minutes will cover much more, it is a system and an environment and they want a range limitation in the humans they put into it.
Good point. I would imagine the heavy clothes and footwear might add about 20 lbs or so.
Here is a taste of what it is about it is a special environment in special conditions, and everything related to it is special and limited.
I wonder if this is what drew the attention for the study, “the average weight of offshore workers had risen by almost 1st 7Ib (10kg) since 2008.”
Transcript
So we looked at how people’s uh weight predominantly but also their size
affects them from the moment they turn up at the helport, they step on the helicopter, they travel offshore. We
looked at aspects of normal offshore life like going up and down stairs and this affects everything like the beds,
the mattresses. Um we looked at um normal work, so confined space, working
at high areas which we have acute issues with. And then we looked at emergency response and that’s where we started
running into some particularly um challenging issues. So we looked at um
donut devices and other descent devices that get you off the platform and at the very last minute. We looked at um life
raft capacity, lifeboat, seat belts, lifeboat um you know capacity for the
number of people on board and there’s issues right the way across all aspects of offshore work. But one area which and
actually the coast guard wrote to us about which is common across every single installation whether uh no no
matter what type of installation is around the helicopter winch capacity that is in the um that’s on all of the
search and rescue helicopters both the industry one and the government search and rescue helicopters. and that winch.
Once you take off the average weight of a um rescue paramedic, their equipment,
When the industry realised weight was a problem
and the stretcher, then um you’re really only left with that 124.7, which we
rounded down to 124 to give us a nice uh safety margin there, but also a real
clear number that everyone could uh could understand. So, so the the number
itself is derived from the helicopter winching, but the risks that we’re mitigating are right across all aspects
Yeah REMFs tend to be smaller
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