Well I guess it's only a matter of time now until either Bristow or CHC have aircraft standing on the flightline unable to fulfil contractual requirements because of lack of crew.
Consider that Bristow are reportedly looking for crew for Kenya, but are they offering priority to crews who want to leave Nigeria - yeah, right
. I'm told that their reported pay rise of 4% actually works out slightly more overall because of the increase in location allowance, but the continuing 7/5 means that CHC have quite a number of extra applications to chose from now. I guess the mixture of anally retentive southern Baptists and old colonial 'Uncle knows best' management will never allow things to change. Until they wake up to some of the new and national talent they have in Nigeria and start lsitening to people it will continue the decline from the company started by Alan Bristow - I wonder what he thinks of it all now?
As for CHC, their pay rise actaully works out at less than 4% because they haven't increased incentive pay. All this for a country where people get shot at, killed and hijacked on a regular basis. With the pay rise a year 14 captain gets around US$93,000 per annum - probably not much different than a senior first officer earns on the North Sea. Methinks that as the company gets bigger the management are getting more and more out of touch with reality. They're so desperate that I hear stories of a pilot returning from leave, being picked up from the airport after a 14 hour flight and being asked to fly straight away (well, they had taken a uniform shirt in for him so he could go straight to work!); pilots now being regularly asked to be flexible with the rules about the time the last flight lands (despite the likelihood of a night rescue in Nigeria being no better than ever - just look at what happened to the Pan African 412) and pilots now exceeding the maximum daily allowable flight time. The fresh attitude of CHC when they took over of safety first and obey the rules now seems to have been replaced by 'do whatever you need to get the job done'. Right, with CHC, safety always comes first - except in Nigeria it seems.
As for Caverton................
hahahahahahahahahahahaha
So, if you're not yet desperate, hang on for a while because once those aircraft are sitting there with no crew these companies are going to have to pay the money which they should be paying now. It's about time they woke and started taking the situation seriously. I hear that within CHC operations overseas there are moves to start a pilots' association and a pathetic pay rise like this will surely increase the number of people who want to join that (which is probably the last thing the company wants). But just look and see what pay and conditions are like on the North sea now if you want to see what an association or union can achieve.