CHC LLC purchases Babcock

[The Witret]

Well my friend from my own experience I simply can’t agree wholly with you. You do make some valid points, however to suggest that all management in the 4 operators have been and are incompetent buffoons is quite simply not true. Don’t get me wrong I have worked with some undeniably questionable people in my time, but to a certain extent those behaviours were born from a sickening pressure from the oil & gas operators and yes, corporate leads higher up the chain in London, Vancouver and Dallas. That is also undeniably true. My own experience is that of trauma, regret, anger and sadness. I genuinely feel sorry for some people on here who say horrible sweeping generalisations and perhaps forget that not every manager is a complete incompetent hapless fool who doesn’t care. The truth probably does not exist because these forums are never wrong and people like me never speak up because they know they will be shot down as a non entity. I’ve had my fill of this industry. It’s murders good will and generates behaviours which are monstrous. I feel sorry for Babcock Oil & Gas staff who only wanted a future and now for many there is none as CHC will never accept the existing structures due to unprecedented cost cutting across business. I personally think the worst is yet to come, an inevitable negative event that will change everything. Good luck to you, im well and truly done with it all. Last post.

Originally Posted by rotor-rooter

I think you may have this backwards? The Helicopter Operators got bigger and bolder and Offshore Helicopters became a boom business, with every carpet-bagging chancer showing up to slurp from the trough. Managing the companies, changing financial strategies, cashing out of equity, leasing everything, it all changed in the last decade. Then you need to look at the management personnel themselves - we already know the behaviours of the "leaders" who enriched themselves, hired their friends and then ran each of these companies into the ground (Quote. "They should be hung drawn and quartered to pay for their bullish, arrogant and frankly disgusting behaviour"). So which company should we consider first? CHC, PHI, Bristow, Era or Babcock as the big ones that made the biggest splash. The beneficial owners of the helicopter companies did this to themselves. They appointed people with zero knowledge, experience or interest in helicopters, then wondered why it didn't work out? And then the unthinkable happened, the bottom fell out of the oil market, (which for some of the more senior people in the industry, wasn't a first), and the entire house of cards collapsed. Manufacturers, Leasing outfits, Operators and anyone remotely involved in the offshore field watched it all fall apart.

So quite how this can be laid at the feet of the Oil Companies, doesn't compute with me. It is always easiest to blame your Customers, but if they can't pay your rates, they'll look elsewhere. And guess what? Another helicopter company is ALWAYS prepared to do the work for less money - market forces at work. You can either keep flying, or shut the doors, and we have all seen what happened as a result. The only people who won were the incompetent Boards and Managements that allowed this situation to foment, grossly enriching themselves in the process, and the losers were anyone unfortunate enough to own stock in these companies, who saw their entire investment wiped out completely, and the employees that actually make the company run and generate the revenue, who ended up unemployed.

I do agree with you about getting out; today's helicopter business is not the one that the business was built on and has very little resemblance to the past organizations filled with talented, experienced people who garnered the respect of all around them, rather than the contempt of their staff. We are not at the end of it yet, and there will be more consolidation and likely much more pain before it ends. It is almost predictable that there will be other significant failures, sales, consolidation and changes in 2021, the scale of which is undetermined at this time. If there is no change into 2022, there may be widescale collapse of the largest operators who have now committed every asset with the hope of a turnaround, as the global business returns to smaller, more competitive, regional operators.

Or, maybe something completely different will turn the World on its head.