Mitchaa wrote:
Does anyone know how profitable contracts are in 2019 in comparison to how they were back in 2015/16?
New bid contracts in the recent cut throat era, probably not so profitable. Longer term contracts have built in escalations which protect the helicopter operator against general inflationary increases, OEM hourly price rises and even price rises caused by pilot and engineer pay rises under union contracts. If the bid price was right to begin with, they should make reasonable money. In 2014, helicopters were in demand and contract prices were peak. If a helicopter operator can't make money under older long term contracts then they either didn't bid the right price or don't manage their business very well.
There is a rule of how many non pilots and engineers you can have hanging off the skids before your helicopter won't get airborne. Guess what, $ million dollar salaries even for CEOs are very heavy. Even if its managed properly, the helicopter business doesn't enough money to have layers of "management" on multi million $ salaries.