RVDT;
I was offshore when the oil companies stopped SPIFR, but on corporate/VIP the choice lies with the customer. If its a particularly difficult job, or a very high profile customer we may ask to go two crew, but its up to the man who pays the bills.
All of our pilots are rated for SPIFR, sometimes when we are lucky they send two of us. Oddly I never feel the workload halves, It actually feels that it goes down by about two thirds.
On our renewals we are never told where we will be doing the approaches until the visual section is over. At that point the examiner says "Take me to ******** and fly the following approaches." He has everything booked with the airfield concerned we just have to get it right. It stops the complacency of knowing the plates off the top of your head if it is home base.
VH