Bristow now has the Super Puma down at Port Harcourt NAF Base flying for SNEPCO. Must make it pretty noisy in that funny little hangar they built - obviously the Super Puma wasn't in the plans when that was built! Their ramp is getting pretty crowded now and I'm surprised they didn't concrete over a lot more grass to make more room. Unfortunately, most of the machinery is pretty old and some of it must now be getting towards the maximum age allowed in Nigeria. The Super Pumas may be big, but they're also pretty long in the tooth. I wonder how they're doing for crew housing. I hear a number of people are not enjoying Woji, mostly because of the location and the internet isn't going to be all that they were originally promised. They still have people leaving and it must be only a matter of time before they can't crew aircraft any more. If there's no mention of 6/6 in their forthcoming pay and allowances review, expect further desertions
I think Musket33 hit the nail on the head.
CHC, despite 6/6 still has pilots and engineers leaving. There are still promises of improvements to their housing, but they're still going to be living on the Areta Estate and I hear that they may actually be looking at putting internet in all the houses there. Just as well because they haven't got much of anything else, except a bar. It must be costing them a lot of money getting all their pilots going to Nigeria Canadian licences and then having them leave. Both they and Bristow have had pilots and engineers leave after only one tour. It will be interesting to see if they do anything to redress the situation in their pay review next month - probably not. Apparently their ops director thinks they all live in some tropical paradise
They do at least have some shiny new helicopters due in Nigeria soon and a number of the older 365Ns and S76Bs have been got rid of lately.
Caverton have been advertising on Just Helicopters, but they'll find it difficult to get anybody at the rates they're offering for 4/1. They also have expat and national staff leaving which must be difficult in a very small company like that. I believe that their Dauphins and Squirrells are leased from Heliportugal and this caused a problem between the MD of Heliportugal and another former director who was concerned as to whether they'd get the machines back. Rumour has it that they may be looking to sell their A109. Wonder if that will be easy after it's been in Nigeria and operated by a wholly Nigerian company? It'll be interesting to see if they find a buyer and what they plan to replace it with. All the stuff they have is pretty old and just having a few leather seat covers doesn't mean they have any of the equipment becoming more necessary in Nigeria, like TCAS. They have about 20 new machines on the way if the post above is anything to go by
The post may be a good joke, but their salaries and roster aren't.
With the price of oil set to stay high, increasing work in Nigeria if the big operators don't take some drastic measures soon I wouldn't be surprised to see more helicopters sitting out on the ramp doing nothing because of lack of crews and engineers to keep them flying.
