The contractor could end up carrying the can publicly for all sorts of things on this contract. It's no wonder that they are carefully managing the public and media relations including using outside specialists.
If there is change that people don't fully understand, and very few understand this one, they will tend to have a go at the most obvious target. In spite of the BIG letters on the side of the aircraft, the contractor is more likely to collect the flak than the customer.
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From an MR point of view, some of those foreign or non-EU pilots are welcome in the mix. There is clearly a good variety of pilots across the entire Bristow fleet including some from Norway, or the Alps, or Alaska, or Nepal, for whom mountains are nothing new. Diversity fuels evolution.
It seems to me that it will end up with a good mix. I expect part of this mix will be a large number of Managed Transition pilots and probably even more MT rear-crew. Inevitably, there will be one or two guys who are currently working in SAR in neighbouring territories, who might be Brits or might not. Then a wedge of NS bus-drivers who've always wanted to do this or wanted to return to it. Maybe a few guys and girls from further afield.
If most of them are people who really love doing the job and a few are shekel-counters who are just passing through, and if some have monster log-books and some are relative newbies, then we are in no better or worse place than we are at present.
Last edited by jimf671; 12th Apr 2013 at 09:23.