For Chopperpunter,
I am afraid you are just another victim of the huge pressures the helicopter operators were put under by the oil companies.
We are a high cost industry and are not able to turn the tap on and off at the oil companies whim. The down turn of the late 90's caused us to to have to cut costs significantly and for their own survival, CHC who owned BIH made a high risk move and bought out Helikopter Service Group which owned Bond. Had they not done this, BIH would have folded (no bad thing some would say).
Having borrowed huge amounts of money to buy HKS, CHC had to get as much cash back as possible to repay the banks. The new company was completely wrong footed by the industry which suddenly demanded a big increase in activity. Having laid off staff and lost some very competent managers, we were expected to react overnight.
We are still behind the drag curve with insufficient facilities, insufficient skills and a totally demotivated workforce. HeliEng is right by saying that line engineering is working their butts off trying to keep the maximum number of aircraft on line and they are doing the best they can in very difficult circumstances. In the meantime, senior management's prime objective is to release as much cash back to Canada.
Those of us at the front line are doing our best to keep the service running but until we get some stability to build ourselves up again, things are going to remain somewhat difficult.