Bristow - Pilot Career Open Days - Leicester

[CharlieOneSix]

From the Bristow website, they are holding Career Open Days for Pilots - and expecting to start recruiting having recently made pilots redundant......

UK Oil & Gas Operations are expected to have pilot opportunities over the next 12 months and this is also our route into Search and Rescue Pilot Careers.

Requirements to attend:

Hold a basic CPL (H) with ATPL Theory
Hold a current IR or in process of attaining this qualification
Have a safe flying record
The right to work and reside in the UK.

Bristow Career Open Days for Pilots

[Alisoncc]

You going to apply C16? Chance of a lifetime.

[ribrash]

Sounds promising.Recruiting after redundancies ??

[CharlieOneSix]

You going to apply C16? Chance of a lifetime.

I went back for the first time in 2012 after I'd been retired 13 years so I could sit in on a ground run of the then new Sikorsky S92. A senior manager saw me in the planning room and welcomed me back, asking if I was contracting for them. I took great delight in saying no way, not for any money - regardless of the fact I was almost 68 then!

Sounds promising.Recruiting after redundancies ??

Standard fare for them. Ask for voluntary redundancies from expensive Senior Captains over 55. Offer a package if you volunteer, statutory redundancy if you don't. Then when new contracts are in the offing recruit newbies in at the bottom end of the pay scales. Publicly you can say you haven't had to make anyone take compulsory redundancy. Happened to me in 99 - but I was delighted to take the offer - and I gather nothing has changed.

[ribrash]

You going to apply C16? Chance of a lifetime.

I went back for the first time in 2012 after I'd been retired 13 years so I could sit in on a ground run of the then new Sikorsky S92. A senior manager saw me in the planning room and welcomed me back, asking if I was contracting for them. I took great delight in saying no way, not for any money - regardless of the fact I was almost 68 then!

Sounds promising.Recruiting after redundancies ??

Standard fare for them. Ask for voluntary redundancies from expensive Senior Captains over 55. Offer a package if you volunteer, statutory redundancy if you don't. Then when new contracts are in the offing recruit newbies in at the bottom end of the pay scales. Publicly you can say you haven't had to make anyone take compulsory redundancy. Happened to me in 99 - but I was delighted to take the offer - and I gather nothing has changed.

Bast'ards.

[FD2]

It happened like that about 1998. A fax was sent to Aberdeen saying that this process was happening - package or statutory redundancy if you didn't take it. The twerps (how polite of me) at Redhill didn't bother sending a copy to Norwich but a friend of the Chief Pilot sent him down a copy.

He laughed and thought to himself that it couldn't therefore apply to him as they hadn't sent a copy to Norwich, and anyway he was the Chief Pilot. A nagging voice made him phone an old management friend at Redhill who told him that it did indeed apply to him and several other expensive pilots at Norwich too. The a*sehole in charge of HR had the charm of a snake (and the conscience too).

[CharlieOneSix]

Chief Pilot Norwich - was that our small friend who when walking on sand wiped out his footprints with his wiggling arse?

[FD2]

No - not Mini Me! The altogether more capable and well connected HB. Got the Norwich operation going on a shoestring when Bristow got the Shell contract for the whole of the North Sea from KLM in the Dutch Sector and SNS and another company for the NNS. Rumour had it that it was someone in Shell Aviation who got the ball rolling on that one - perhaps hoping for internal promotion. KLM had given excellent service for three years in the two southerly sectors.

HB was a loyal company man who sadly realised, eventually, that we were just bums on seats as far as that faceless bunch of directors and senior 'management' were concerned and that Alan Bristow, despite his combative manner at times, would have handled it better. Sadly he had sold up and retired and the company was in the hands of lesser men.

The restrictions on expenditure meant some days were very disorganised, like a re-enactment of the retreat from Moscow, but that served Shell right!

[CharlieOneSix]

I remember the crewroom groans on one occasion when it was announced that we had won the Shell contract. None of us up north liked flying for them. I once got reported by a Shell manager on a loong Shell flight for laughing at Johnny G's never ending string of jokes which relieved the boredom. Unprofessional they said. That's what happens when you put the cockpit in the passenger compartment.

Funnily enough after retirement I became very good friends with one of the former Shell Aviation reps in Aberdeen - who was a pain in the backside when we were both working - when it transpired we had both been on the same Squadron but a year apart. We met up each year at reunions. I hope to meet up with him during my trans-UK drive over the next week or so.

[FD2]

Al M?

[CharlieOneSix]

No, Al was okay. JC.