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BRISTOW SIGNS DEAL FOR 10 S-92S TO RELIEVE GROUNDING OF SUPER PUMA FLEET
Thursday November 8th 2012 - by Vertical Staff
Offshore transportation company Bristow has signed a deal for 10 Sikorsky S-92s as part of the company’s effort to cope with the potential long-term fall-out of two recent ditchings of Eurocopter Super Pumas in the North Sea.
Bristow currently has a fleet of 16 Super Pumas (15 EC225s and one AS332L2) that are grounded following the most recent ditching of a CHC-operated EC225 on Oct. 22. All 17 passengers and two crew escaped the incident without injury, but the follow-up investigation found that a failure of the vertical shaft in the main gearbox was to blame – the same cause for a similar incident back in May.
“We’ve been working very hard with Eurocopter and other industry participants to determine the root cause of the accident and the impact on the long term availability of the Super Puma and the EC225s,” said Bill Chiles, Bristow’s president, CEO & director. “This is a moving situation that’s changing every day."
The purchase of the S-92s was revealed in the company’s recently-released financial results, which said the it was part of the company’s effort to “minimize or eliminate the impact on our clients” of the current grounding.
“We’re supporting very critical operations out there, so we can’t afford to stop the flow of people and material, and that has to continue,” said Chiles. “We’re going to work with each of our clients individually to solve their challenges, because they are different.”
In a conference call following the release of the results, Jonathan Baliff, senior vice president, chief financial officer, said the S-92s would also work to enable fleet replacement. “When we make big purchases, we partner with our OEM suppliers to, in essence, recycle the older technology [in the fleet]. The purchase of these 10 new Sikorsky S-92s has directly led to us being able to exit the old S-76a model completely. That will happen over time.”
Chiles said the company’s focus was currently on safety, as it seeks to relieve the pressure built by the grounding of the Super Puma fleet. “We’re going around and freeing up all available resources around the world, turning over every stone to make sure we’re covered both short term and long term,” he said. “We’re moving new aircraft in, we’re moving AW139s, and S-76s in there and S-92s in there. And that creates a lot of challenges with resources, not only with aircraft, but pilots and engineers. So we’ve got to be very focused in safety.”
Chiles said any specifics on a return to service of the company’s Super Puma fleet was yet to be released. “We’re dealing with the short-term issues and we’re also looking at what we do on the long-term basis if this situation continues,” he said. “It will evolve very quickly. Over the next few weeks, we should be in a better position to talk.”
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