Bristow looks set to lose a number of staff as the year draws to a close. The reorganization of their staff house in Lagos means that someone eating 3 meals a day there may well now have to pay 50% more than the daily food allowance. CHC, of course, provides 3 cooked meals a day free of charge to its staff and those in Port Harcourt have a cooked lunch or salad alternative provided at work. There have been rumors for some months of an increase in the Bristow food allowance (which is already 25% less than is paid to those CHC staff who are self-catering) but their management seem completely paralyzed by inertia and look likely to put off any decision until at least january. It seems that the mere mention of the word Agbami is now capable of freezing senior managers in their tracks
. The poor allowances combined with a rapidly falling salary for those paid US$ salaries and the prospect of salaries being reviewed on a performance basis in January means that more Bristow pilots and engineers are likely to follow those who have already moved across in the last few months. The Canadian $ is now trading at 1.002 US$ and €0.68. Most of the guys I know at Bristow have no idea what performance based pay means to them. Will those who fly less get paid less, will those engineers who work shorter shifts get paid less? The threat of CHC moving to the so-called Death Camp has now receded, but quite a few Bristow guys have no idea where they'll be living next year with Shell talking of moving all their 155 crews to Warri, where at least they'll be spared the 2 hours plus journey to and from work they face every day in Port Harcourt.
When the situation gets to be like this in CHC, senior management usually get out to visit the bases and the likes of Christine Baird and Brian Clegg even visit Port Harcourt, stay overnight and talk to and have drinks with the staff. Many Bristow staff, even those in Lagos, have never spoken to Danny Holder and as for the likes of he, Richard Burman or even the likes of Dapo, Paul Weddick or the Major visiting bases and talking to people - heaven forbid that they should be subjected to having to mix with their employees and risk finding out what people really think
CHC will be bringing in at least a couple EC225s in a few months and rumor has it that at least 2 additional ones will be coming in, as well as a 76C++. The initial problems with the AW139 are now behind it and crews flying it love the power it has. A weight upgrade to 6800 kgs next year will make it a formidable machine. There may be a few old Dauphins, but CHCs fleet is largely modern and looking at the hangar facilities in Port Harcourt with huge amounts of new ground equipment in the old hangar and now in the even larger new hangar shows that maintenance is high on the agenda for CHC. It's a bit sad looking along the ramp and seeing old relics on the flight line outside an empty hangar
. I wonder what auditors think when they visit? It's okay of course because the helicopters are flown all the way to Lagos for their servicing most weekends.
There has been some talk on another thread here about CHC being broken up and sold off, possibly to Bristow, but out here in Nigeria things look the other way around