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Sleepless on Ventura


Mabbiesmum
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I have some sympathy with the OP on this one. As someone else said, a holiday is for rest and relaxation, both of which were severely disrupted by this. Clearly the need to medically evacuate a passenger by helicopter is not taken lightly, but if the arrival of a helicopter was genuinely so potentially dangerous that it could have smashed into the side of the ship, then they shouldn't be doing it. Perhaps that seems harsh in a potentially life threatening situation, but a helicopter wouldn't have less than two crew and the death toll if it slammed in to the ship would have been greater. So, if it was genuinely that dangerous then the helicopter shouldn't have flown. And if, as I suspect, it wasn't that dangerous and was a bit of an over reaction, then passengers shouldn't have experienced that level of disruption. As often is the case, I suspect that this stems from the confidence of the Captain. I suspect that others would have handled the evacuation in a different way. I've heard of a number of helicopter evacuations from cruise ships, but never this level of disruption.

 

 

hovering to winch is the most difficult part of any medevac by helo,there is always the chance however slight and however rare that things go wrong , this is a standard precaution taken by the master to minimise risk to passengers and crew of vessel, only those passengers situated directly under the hover point marked Helo or H on upper deck would be moved, all situations are different weather, design of ship, condition of casualty etc once on scene the pilot would advise on course and speed to be made by the vessel

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We have been on board 2 ships when a medi-vacs took place. The first one was during the day just out of LA on the way to Hawaii and everyone was told to leave the open decks and balconies for the short time that the helicopter was above the ship. The other 2 were during the night (consecutive nights on the Crown Princess in Alaska) we were in one of the balcony cabins looking out of the stern and were asked to evacuate the cabin because the helicopter would be toward the back of the ship and all the aft cabins needed to be evacuated as the night time medi-vac was more hazardous for the helicopter. We were told by Princess that it was a safety requirement of the US Coastguard to evacuate the cabin.

 

Obviously our situations were controlled by the US Coastguard and so may be different than in Europe but I would not be surprised if the decision to evacuate the cabins in Europe was also decided by whoever controls the medi-vac rather than by the captain.

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hovering to winch is the most difficult part of any medevac by helo,there is always the chance however slight and however rare that things go wrong , this is a standard precaution taken by the master to minimise risk to passengers and crew of vessel, only those passengers situated directly under the hover point marked Helo or H on upper deck would be moved, all situations are different weather, design of ship, condition of casualty etc once on scene the pilot would advise on course and speed to be made by the vessel

 

Yes, that's my understanding too and I recall that when it happened on one of our cruises the open decks were cleared and people were asked to stay inside on balconies. I don't recall people being asked to vacate cabins completely. The implication in this case was that the cabin clearance was quite widespread and more than the directly affected area. Perhaps the OP can clarify?

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