The Aero Paradise
According to Ian Richards, CHC resource planner, who was here in PH last week CHC will not make any pay announcement until at least the middle of June. The board of directors have to first of all decide on the size of the pot, and I will be surprised if it is more than 5%. There are plenty of rumours flying around, but there is no substance to them. It will be up to the CHC management to decide what to do with that pot. My guess is that they will conduct a fire fighting exercise.
The last figure from Rod Legassick, Aero's Head of Rotary Flight Dept, is that Aero needs 27 pilots by the end of the year. At the moment Aero cannot keep pace with those leaving let alone recruit more. There was one pilot who resigned a few weeks ago who did not even fly one revenue trip. CHC must have been particularly pissed off, because they had just paid for his Canadian licence. He must have cost them thousands. However there does not seem to be any serious attempt to understand why Aero are losing pilots and engineers in droves. Until the Aero/CHC management admit to themselves that this place is a ****hole they will not do anything to change it. When the lights are turned off by the last one out of the door they might then see the problem...........or not!! Meanwhile our two managers have buried their heads in the sand at the Intel camp having first donned blinkers and ear defenders just to make sure that they don't hear or see anything nasty.
Somebody previously asked about numbers of airframes. In Port Harcourt, Aero currently has nine Dauphins (N,N2,N3 models) and seven S76C+. One Dauphin is in Norway for an overhaul and one S76 is a hangar queen. I am not sure about the exact numbers, but there will be a net increase in aircraft of about four or five by the end of the year including some AB139's. At the current rate there won't be anybody to fly or maintain them.
I can't understand why not because according to Brian Clegg we live in PARADISE.