Accommodation in Port Harcourt has been a joke for a long time ever since Bristow decided to save money and move from the location with probably the best security and housing in Port Harcourt, to a series of hotels and apartment where security is a joke. As for the BRC in Lagos, that's been a joke for years and the only sensible thing would be to raze it to the ground and build a place fit to live in
With the AS332 fleet soon to depart some pilots are now being laid off, as well as those who've had enough and departed for what they hope will be greener partners.
The main Bristow website is also a joke, still listing Rupert Atkins (now happily retired) and Grant Witham as Agip base managers.
On the Bristow Search and Rescue website they also say
We have provided SAR services in all the countries in which we operate
.
Bristow Search and Rescue. However, since the SAR S92 failed to go ahead, the only SAR service that I know of which we provide is the one very limited Bell 412 for day emergency operations at QIT.
Meanwhile we now have 12 confirmed Ebola cases in Lagos, of whom, 4 have died. There are 189 cases under surveillance in Lagos and 2 in Enugu. 5 are said to have almost fully recovered. It's difficult to have much faith in these figures as the Registrar of the Medical Laboratory Council of Nigeria has said that Nigeria has no laboratory with the required biosafety levels needed for the diagnosis of the virus (level 4 is required, but Nigeria has nothing better than level 3). He explained that the labs are capable of detecting the virus, but without level 4 containment, the outcome could be very hazardous. The only places where Ebola suspects testing can be done at the moment are the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta or the Institute Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory, buttressing the fact that people are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus!
The WHO has not recommended any travel bans for airlines flying to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, though many airlines have now suspended flights to those countries. Kenya Airways now joins, British Airways, Togo’s ASKY Airlines, Arik Air of Nigeria, Gambia Bird, Air Cote d'Ivoire and Emirates who have all suspended flights to and from the affected nations, though not to Nigeria.