SAS, I agree with nearly everything you said.
Exception: PHI tried to not put more than four guys in the new trailers. Only rarely would they put five. I mean, give them credit, they really tried. (This may all have changed post-Katrina, I don't know. I do know that they were cognizant of those quality-of-life issues and tried very hard to make them better.)
I have heard from guys at RLC that they are stuck 6-to-a-trailer (a single-wide trailer, remember), which is just pathetic in my opinion.
I had discussion with senior PHI management in which they would...super-secret-off-the-record-if-you-ever-repeat-this-I'll-kill-you agree with my contention that GOM pilots should be making *more* than their EMS counterparts.
But you know how that would go over. The union (of which I was a member of the first Negotiating Committee!) and the company would have none of it. "Pilots are pilots."
Well, yes and no.
EMS has always been deemed a "more prestigious" assignment while GOM flyers were considered nothing more than a bunch of bubbas in flying pickemup trucks. To a degree, PHI itself fostered this image - or at least did nothing to dispell it.
Even if nobody is willing to admit it out loud, the GOM lifestyle is a hardship. It is. PHI's attitude has always been, "It's not for everybody," and we can all agree on that because it's true. But it would be "for" more people if the pay/benefits were commensurate with the increased demands of the job. Like I said, those within PHI management who privately recognized this admitted there was little they could do to change the paradigm without upsetting a huge applecart. Their decision was simply to live with the high turnover of GOM pilots.
I honestly believe that PHI thinks they will never run out of new hires.
Era's recent offer of travel pay was a step in the right direction. But more needs to be done.
What does turnover cost? Well, the evidence is that the cost is not a problem for operators. For one thing, training expenses are tax deductible, so the whole training department is a write off. Secondly, the new-hire and recurrent training is FAA-mandated, so there's no getting around having the department to begin with.
We can conclude that "high turnover" is simply not a problem for operators like PHI. If it was, they'd do something about it.
But what are the real costs of high turnover? Inexperienced S-76 pilots who can't even land on a platform without sticking one of the gear legs in the fence? Inept SIC's who can't even find the windshield wiper switch, causing a distraction for the PIC that ends up with a perfectly good S-76 flying into the water? These are horribly embarassing incidents for the company.
They're going to get worse.
[EDIT] To This Ain't Jim Beam: The uniform doesn't make the man. I've always said that I would wear a clown suit - round, red nose...big, floppy shoes and all if the company supplied it. I do not care, and the brown PHI uniform never had any negative influence on how I viewed myself or how I did my job, as it should be with any professional. Pilots who are that concerned with their self-image should probably not go to work for companies like PHI.)