Bond Offshore Helicopters

[TPointer]

From Rotor And Wing magazine. Bond Offshore Helicopters wants to have pilots trained for its offshore business in the North Sea and plans to invest 7.9 million to do it. Bond has hired Oxford Aviation to screen potential pilots through a series of tests and analysis. Candidates who make it passed the screening process will be sent to Bristow Academy in Titusville FL for training. Over a two day period, potential candidates will be selected based on their academic record, background, and work initiative, as well as how they react to high pressure enviroments. Those individuals who make it past the second day which includes discussions and technical testing, will be sent to interview with Bond Offshore Helicopters. The cost of the training is $140,000 to $200,000 USD. According to Oxford, Bond pays 70% of the training while the student then must pay the balance. Oxford expects 12 students in the first year of the program.

I am considering this program and I wanted to get some feedback from the experienced pilots here is this forum. No, I am not an expert, I'm just simply quoting an article I read from Rotor and Wing to get some advice about this program. Thanks for your time.

 

 

 

Thomas

Edited October 29, 2007 by TPointer

[Nuke]

BS is what I say!

30% is still $60,000.00 to the student. What kind of training are they providing that costs $200,000.00?

[FinR]

BS is what I say!

Nuke,

 

Before you continue yelling much more, i think you should look more closely to where Bond is based (Jaa-land) and what are the requirements for licences& certification needed for off-shore operations there...

What kind of training are they providing that costs $200,000.00?

That might actually be a fair price. JAA IR(h) alone costs about the same than the whole "professional pilot program" usually costs in the US, even abit more. That's because the flights, 45 hours if my memory serves, has to be flown with a real IFR-certified twin engine helicopter, not with a Robbie with few extra instruments. Cheapest is propably AS-355 or A109. Now i let you do the calculation...There's also a possibility to do most of the hours with real full motion simulators (S-76, AS-332 or something similar) but that's propably even more expensive.

 

Now add all the other stuff; PPL first, then CPL, CRM and SuperPuma type rating....

 

I'd say that if you pay 50000usd of all that yourself, it's a fair price.

 

FinR

Edited October 28, 2007 by FinR