froggy,
I don't think anybody minds DanCopter coming in as they are an honest, professional operator - though it was rather amusing that even after being after the contract for so long they couldn't mobilise their aircraft in time for the start!
What most people do mind is that a company with very dodgy beginnings (have you read all the reports on Sahara Reporters) and with questionable (definitely not European or North American) business ethics and practices, should be gifted the Smell contract.
Only 12 pilots left Bristow to go to Caverscam and if they could be flying the (Shell owned) EC155s yesterday, why shouldn't they be flying them today? At least 2 of the pilots who are now with Caverscam had to leave either the Smell operation or Bristow under something of a cloud and now they're back and a couple who were not considered to be ready to fly as Captains will now be doing so.
The Smell Aircraft advisors have also been somewhat economical with information they are presenting to Smell as facts and have managed the change very poorly, but conniving with certain people they wanted to come over to set things up. It's my belief that they and Caverscam totally miscalculated on the number of people who would be willing to leave a world-class known quantity to join what is perceived by many as a dodgy operator with no track record.
Nobody has yet received any increase in salary that I'm aware of because of Caverscam and it has not yet been established that all those people who have joined Caverscam have received what they were promised or that they will continue to do so in the future.
The 3 DanCopter EC155B1s will probably have to continue flying daily because unless Caverscam can get enough suitably qualified pilots soon, they will run out of hours - though doubtless Smell will bend over backwards to change the rules as they already have to make it easier for them.
There is too much high level politics involved in this for anyone to be prepared to give a break to a company which is not operating to the same rules or on the same playing field as anybody else, although everybody knows Caverscam will not be allowed to fail under the present political regime (and probably not under the next regime because until now, and doubtless in the future, the Nigerian 'big men' always survive and are able to exert their corrupting influence on whichever puppets are presented to the tired people of this country as the leaders.
I'm sure you'll enjoy flying the AW139 for them - but for how long? Many of us have principles and would rather stack shelves on a night shift at WalMart than try out a company like Caverscam. The soup is already tainted anyway and a bit of spit in it might just be an improvement
