R all Heli GA operators disorganised?

[quidam]

Deliberately vague..........

I am a 100 ish hrs ATPL(h) student who's been mainly flying with the same heli school from the outset.

Primarily my question is for those rotorheads who self fly hire.

Do you find the school you use totally disorganised?

I'm not including poor Wx, unexpected mechanical problems etc but just poor communication between staff concerning the routine planable stuff :(. It seems that despite things appearing fairly straight forward everybody reckons somebody is doing something, when in reality nobody is doing it.

I don't think given the money its costing me that an efficient level of service is unreasonable. I've spoken to the owners previously and given it 12 months for the situation to improve, but I'm still getting last minute calls asking me to 'compromise' and alter my arranged and booked plans purely because they've f**ked up. Not easy when you arrange little excursions rather than repeatedly wallying about in the local area

I've a little time with another school who are too far for me to use regularly but that are a thousand fold better :confused:

I'm that tired of the whole farce that I'll be relocating my hours building elsewhere.

Am I seeing two extremes of the scale or are the lot I'm presently with just taking the pi$$ ??

[Too Cloudy]

Welcome to our industry. !!!!!!

[Whirlybird]

No, they're not all like that. I've used two schools for self-fly hire, and while neither were perfect in all ways, I've not had problems like you describe - or rarely. One had fantastic availability, and I could often get a helicopter for a longish period at a day or two's notice, if I decided suddenly to go to a fly-in or something like that. I don't know where you're based, but if you send me a pm I'll be happy to tell you who they are.

[SASless]

Take your money to the company that provides the service.....ultimately the others will fold. That is the story of this industry.....except in the past....satisfying the customer usually wound up killing the company for other reasons.

[DBChopper]

Quidam,

So far, I have used three heli companies for SFH, just for a bit of variety. The one I gained my PPL(H) with were superb, an efficient Ops Manager overseeing everything and hardly ever any delays or alterations. The second, a tiny family-run business, is also highly efficient with the only alterations due to the expected tech problems or delays due to wx.

The third, however, is a large company who couldn't organise a pi$$ up in a crew room. On one occasion I turned up to hire an R22, completed a Check A and could then not find the tech log. I was told, "It must be because it's just had a service." I commented that the oil was too black to have just been changed. It then transpired they had let me check out a helo which was out of hours and had yet to be serviced. At least I didn't get off the ground... On every occasion I was left waiting for one or two hours. It was never due to weather, just plain inefficiency. No apology, no nothing, so no customer. I went elsewhere.

PM me and I'll let you know the names - having an idea where you're based I have a couple of suggestions.

DBChopper
:cool: