Coatimundi - I do appreciate your real and genuine need to get back home for Xmas, and whilst I have no great love of Bristow at the moment, I can say that the delays are not really to do with disgruntled pilots and any poor operating practices on the part of crews or the company.
Yes, there are pilots at risk of redundancy, and so we are down a few vital crew members right now. Apparently these aren't on any contracts and so are surplus to requirement - The benefit of having them when we need to play 'catch up' is pretty evident however.
The pilots that are in are not in any real dispute with the company and whilst nobody likes the way it is being done, there are no sudden flurry of sick notes or working to rule or anything like that. Crews who are in are genuinely trying to get the job done.
Over the last week, Bristow have flown when the others didn't, Bond have flown when we certainly thought they shouldn't have done, (there were also some flights conducted West of Shetland which did have better weather) and Scotia have flown when they have the S-92 which does have a marginally better icing clearance than the Super Puma types. Though it is hard to believe, the 3 companies do all talk to each other and state whether they are flying or grounding aircraft, but I accept there is no solid policy - We quite often don't know what others are doing until we look out the window and see someone taking off ! We should all basically be working to the same rules.
All we can do is take the rule book and assess whether it is safe and legal to fly - As many of these rules are open to some degree of 'interpretation' there is often disagreement even within our own crews as to whether flights can be achieved with the required safety margins in place. But I can assure you that Bristow crews are in and trying to get the job done as best we can and I think you'll find as the weather has improved, a lot of catching up has been done.
As to the Aberdeen Flight Departures disappearing off the web, I've no idea, but I've never seen it happen before ?!?!?
Good luck and hope you get off the rig soon