'Uncle Bob' was heard around Port Harcourt yesterday flying in an ACN Dauphin. But I hear he was just here doing his check ride ready for bringing the Caverton helicopter down next week. Their terminal building looks ready now so I would think they're getting close to starting something up from here. With the new airport road well under way I wonder if they'll find much business for their shuttle service they advertise on their website? I guess there's plenty of opportunity for charters anyway as Port Harcourt is really busy these days.
Tom,
Are you sure about those 407s? I know the Nigerian Police Force has just got some they're operating and Pan African has been operating them for some time. Are you sure it wasn't one of them? Actually there was an article in the papers here recently about someone building a heliport in Maryland in Lagos to operate single engine helicopters! Apparently he hadn't actually got planning permission from anyone and it's been closed down. Maybe the 407s were going to go there (though I heard a rumour that he was getting a couple of Astars).
I see that Shell are putting a lot of passengers on the Aero 737s now. Is this tied in with the reported demise of the Dornier 328s?
Aero seem to be losing more pilots to Bristow. I hear another one has just quit and is moving up the road. It doesn't seem to happen the other way very much. Despite some of the other posts, the Aero association really is just that it seems. It lets the pilots and mechanics keep in touch and put their views through a news group and then there are a few people who put the views expressed there to the management. It has the support of the management so it seems to be working well just as reported by Cold Filtered. Of course it's difficult to tell if it's Bristow or Aero now because the colour scheme of the new CHC/ACN S76 is so similar to the OLOG/Bristow S76 red, white and blue colour scheme that maybe one of the companies should think about changing if they want to preserve a decent corporate identity. Quite a nice, distinctive scheme is a white background with a couple of broad orange diagonal lines
