The thing is the days of passionate helicopter people like Alan Bristow,Morten Hancke ,Bob Schreiner and Guy Lloyd are over these were all owners who had passion for helicopters and their employees and there word ment somthing ,we are all owned now by publicly listed companies with faceless boards of directors who only care about the profit margin, we engineers and pilots are mere numbers to make that profit becauce we are passionate about our work means nothing to them , its the mighty dollar that controls everything, and that is why the heavy maintenance is done in Norway, the facilities were built in the day of Morten Hancke when money was rolled back into the company (could any of you see any helicopter company today building facilities like Stavanger....I think not), and Norway has strong Unions and labour laws the UK does not, I was in Norway when CHC took over they had all these plans to change things , cut costs, move the workshops etc to Aberdeen were it was cheaper.....then they hit the unions and Norwegian labour laws, it was good to watch them backpedaling, component and heavy maintenance will always be done first in Norway and any overflow if its cheaper will go to Aberdeen were people can be hired and fired at a whim (to hard to deal with Norway!!)
Unfortunatly thats the way of our industry now Norway, Danmark and Australia with Pilot and Engineer unions who are willing and able to strike are not interfied with as much as the UK and Global ops with no unions and no ability to stand up to/negotiate with management of the various companies, its unfortunate but thats the way of the global conglomerates we work for.
And yes Aberdeen may be cheaper to do a G check but it is also home of the famous 28 day G check and we all know that was a G check in name only.