Sam Fletcher
OGJ Online
HOUSTON, Sept. 11 -- A nationwide federal emergency no-fly order Tuesday shut down offshore helicopter service in the Gulf of Mexico, but the US Coast Guard reported ships and small vessels were operating normally in those waters and along the Houston Ship Channel.
Officials at Petroleum Helicopters Inc., Air Logistics and Era Aviation -- the three largest offshore helicopter companies -- said they were complying with the federal order that grounded all aircraft following crashes of hijacked commercial airlines into terrorist targets in New York and Washington, DC.
But there appeared to be some confusion as to the amount of latitude allowed.
"They're allowing helicopters that were offshore to come in, but once they reach shore, they have to set down at the nearest facility," an employee of Era Aviation and its parent Rowan Cos. Inc. told OGJ Online.
However, a woman answering the telephone at the Air Logistics base at Scholes Field in Galveston said that helicopters caught offshore by the ban would have to sit it out on manned offshore platforms.
"They're only allowing flights for medical emergencies, with the aircraft given special codes," she said.
Helicopters are the normal means of transporting crews to and from the hundreds of rigs, platforms, tankers, and other facilities off the US Gulf Coast from South Texas to Mississippi. Such crew changes follow staggered schedules so that the fleets of helicopters can best deal with the logistics of transporting thousands of offshore workers during any week.
An extended ban on domestic flights could force a switch to crew boats as a means of getting workers to and from offshore facilities. A spokeswoman at Tidewater Inc. in New Orleans, the largest contractor for supply and support vessels serving the offshore oil and gas industry, said there had been no curtailment of operations among offshore vessels as if Tuesday afternoon.
A Coast Guard official told OGJ Online that there was no curtailment of offshore lightering operations moving oil from supertankers to shore and no restrictions on vessel traffic in and out of the Houston Ship Channel.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected]
