SASless:
I hesitated before I took the bait because, behind the irony, there is a lot of truth in what you have said; however:
The oil companies do not set the rates...the helicopter company does. The oil company does not set the safety standard....the helicopter company does....the oil company does not set the engineering standards....the helicopter company does. The helicopter company is made up of people.....and it is the personal decisions made by those people that determine the standard.
is too simplistic in my view!
The offshore industry is one in which the customer has more influence on the product than most. Certainly in some areas of operation, one only has to examine the contractual rates to see that a number of extremely important innovations are
directly financed by the oil companies.
The reduction in the accident rate in these areas is the direct result of the synergy between pilots, operators, oil companies and the regulator. A similar approach might be useful in other areas.
Having experienced a similar downturn in the past, my sympathy is with the families of the redundant staff but remember the old adage, “when one door closes, many others open”.