Problem Child by name and nature it would seem !
Your 737 (and I believe a typical one carries around 150 pax) is full of average families looking to buy a budget ticket to a holiday destination and are looking for rock-bottom prices. ie. I recently bought 2 tickets, Aberdeen to Luton return for £100 including Taxes.
My 18 pax are paid for by the oil companies who are not looking for the cheapest price. They are making £?? million per day and need the guys out there at any price (obviously within some reason). I've flown 5 hour trips just to deliver a packet of washers !
Their business is producing oil and its a rich business. BP/Shell etc, need the workers out there, they need their frieght delivered and we could set the price a lot higher before any of them are going to consider it too expensive.
Isn't it nice to have such a simplistic outlook on the industry, but in truth that's where we stand. The oil companies need our services desperately and they would be willing to pay for them, yet somehow we have managed to find ourselves boxed into a corner, trying to outbid the competition by charging budget airline prices when they simply weren't required !
You can't compare North Sea Helicopters to the operations at Easyjet & Go. You can however determine that the aircrews, engineers etc do have a comparative working environment and I don't see many of them heading fixed-wing to rotary ! We work just as hard, in a harsher environment, for less pay and something has got to be done about it.