This thread is depressing.
Yes, contracts always change hands and one company rises as another falls etc.
However, the company that is disappearing up its own behind just now has the strongest union membership and a history of improving the industry terms and conditions - the last big industry wide pay rise for example. This fast shrinking company has decided to remove the good terms and conditions it took credit for in the past and either as a result or just unfortunate coincidence it is losing contracts left, right and centre.
Are we really headed back to the days when flying a helicopter was scoffed at by our fixed wing cousins? A time when the only people who could afford to do it were pensioned ex-military or people who had rich Daddies and nothing better to do?
Let's not go back to split pay based on the size of your machine or the reach of your tongue. Nor single pilot IFR offshore ops. There were reasons these things disappeared and they weren't financial.
Anybody else seen Crude Brittania recently and the similarities between 'then' and now?
Hompy