Originally Posted by
industry insider
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.
How many of those "peak" contracts are still being honoured by the oil companies or did most of them called in their 90 day “get out” clauses as soon as the downturn hit and re-tendered to the lowest bidder because bottom line is king, not safety or anything else they preach it to be?
I agree the big helicopter operators have too many management layers adding to the operating costs without offering much in return, making it hard for them to compete with the leaner / meaner operators they used to be like as well.
Sadly I feel like it will be curtains for Bristow, can't see them recovering from this because of the lack of leadership & vision, hope I'm wrong.