I'm rather sceptical about the margins possible with helicopters, particularly as the fares are capped and the landing fees eye-watering, but Executive Helicopters are under embargo until the contract is actually signed so it will be interesting to hear from them next week.
A lot of the media sound-bites are obviously being instigated by the losing team who are making maximum use of the information vacuum.
Aer Arann Islands were taking around €1.2 million in subsidy per annum recently, that is being reduced to €900k for the new contract so they would have likely had made cut-backs anyhow. Not that we'll hear about that now!