Helicopter story. I had been on an offshore GOM BP rig for a few days. On the day I was scheduled to head back to the base in Louisiana a helicopter showed up at the rig, dropped off some personnel, and was refueled. Nobody told me directly to get on board, but I was supposed to be leaving, so I walked up to the helicopter, handed over my bag and hopped on. Everyone seemed to be okay with it. I settled into the back seat and we took off. And headed south! Oops. The pilot and co-pilot both had on headphones, so I couldn’t hear them, and they couldn’t hear me. I just assumed that the helicopter had another pickup somewhere nearby, so I didn’t say anything. We made good progress, southward, and I was really starting to wonder what was going on. 45 minutes later we were still flying south over open ocean with nothing whatever in sight. I could see the gauges in the cockpit and noted that the fuel gauge was getting uncomfortably close to empty. I got a little paranoid and wondered if I had a suicidal pilot who was just going to fly south until we ran out of gas and then ditch in the ocean. Soon enough I spied a large, floating rig directly ahead. I heaved a sigh of relief as we came in for a landing on the rig. I was told to get off and a bunch of crew hustled around getting the helicopter fueled and loading baggage. I was just standing there, and eventually the co-pilot came over and asked what was going on. I informed him that I wasn’t supposed to be on that rig, because it was drilling a super-secret well for BP, and I wasn’t on the need to know list. So I couldn’t stay there . I also pointed out that I was trying to get back to Louisiana so I could fly back to Houston. There was a group of guys standing on the deck with their bags who were clearly waiting to get on the helicopter. They were looking at me like what the hell. The co-pilot came up to me again and asked how much I weighed. I told him and he did some figuring and the went over to the waiting group. He said something to one of the group, who promptly slammed his bag down and starting cursing. I was completely innocent, but it was now clear that I had bumped this poor guy off of the flight, and he was going to have to wait for the next one. I of course got back home, but I spent almost 3 hours on a helicopter flying over the Gulf before it was all over with. That was enough helicopter travel for a lifetime.
