Mama P,
You may be talking a bit tongue in cheek - or not
. But you're right, it's very noticeable that there are a lot of new guys on the patch in Port Harcourt, and many of them don't really know the area. Both Bristow and CHC seem to be releasing pilots as commanders before they're really familiar with the area here - probably because they're both short of crews and in CHC's case, because they also have lots of new co-pilots. It's a worrying trend as far as personal safety goes, particularly when coupled with the vastly increased amount of traffic at the NAF Base (which itself is a much more dangerous place now the NAF will only allow the inadequate taxiway to be used for helicopter operations - except, of course, for their own helicopters
). When you add to that some of the new helicopters from Caverton or OAS, some of whose pilots seem to barely know anything about operating in this country and blunder around barely aware of where they are and reporting their positions horrendously incorrectly - a disaster is just waiting to happen here; it's only a matter of time. The sooner the 2 majors just seize the bull by the horns and install TCAS in all helicopters the better - at least then the position of the barely competent will be a bit more apparent to all (provided they've remembered to turn on their transponders
. Our good luck can't hold up for ever and the odds against us are constantly increasing with some of these dangerous operators now in the field
