Maury

After 40 years I have been out of the business for a couple of years, but come on here occasionally to see what is happening. I ran into no end of grief trying to set up a company for myself - WCB in BC being the biggest problem - and ended up being a sole proprietorship. This was not accepted by many operators as I believe they had issues with the tax man as to what constituted a contractor and ended up having to pay the "contractor's" tax share if he/she didn't pay taxes owed after revenue canada deemed "the contractor" was actually simply an employee. But I digress. My actual question is, "as a contractor, (meaning in effect a company) can you be held liable to the hiring company for damage caused by you ...... blade strike, cooking an engine due to negligence or neglect, or even something so simple as pickling or damaging a water bucket?

Thanks rotor, I think you have warned me of that before. But to be clear. I have no idea who freewheel is or anything about his company. My comments are about the industry in general - there are exceptions in everything - and I have never mentioned or even hinted at company names, at least as I remember. Freewheel obviously has an owners viewpoint and doesn't hesitate to state his beliefs. I have an employees point of view and also do not hesitate to share my beliefs. As for McGuire, congratulations. What you did worked out for you and hopefully you will be flying more next year.

And were those loggers, helicopter pilots first and then took a job setting chokers or are these loggers first who decided they wanted to fly instead. There is a huge difference. As for freewheel's comment re doctors, I know the difference in how long it takes to get accredited to be a doctor. Pretty sure that doctors make more than helicopter pilots, as they should, and are definitely treated with more respect. I do find it interesting that the state of the industry is always someone else's fault and never the operator themselves. I do agree that it would be difficult for one operator to change things though there are upstanding operators out there that don't seem to have a problem. Perhaps if the operators used their union (hac) to not worry quite so much about keeping the archaic flight/duty times, or what constitutes air time or flight time, and instead lobbied their customers to relax their flight hour requirements, somehow, to allow the low time pilot to advance. Spending years pumping toxic material or chasing after chokers, is not going to get you one flight hour ahead, to meet those hour requirements that freewheel is talking about. And just as an aside.......between darkside logger and freewheel, you managed to come up with three classic responses whenever talk of anything to do with aircrew in the helicopter world - "it is a slow year"........save the last two years, Canada has been doing pretty well over the last ten years, certainly in the west, and what did you do for the crews when things were going well (the answer is nil)......"it has always been that way", and with comments like that from an operator, you know it always will be. And of course, "that is just the way it works". Do I need to comment? Believe it or not, things that were normal when I started flying, maps that you had to know how to read, not having constant contact with management, and basically doing whatever we wanted, as long as it was safe, without the customer or TC freaking out. And guess what, we all have computers now. So, in fact, things do change but there has to be a will to do it.

I am just going to throw this out there. Name me one other profession where after doing whatever schooling they needed to get a license or accreditation, are then told that they have to do something that has absolutely nothing to do with their training. Do you think that someone that is trained as a heavy equipment operator is going to get on the end of a shovel for the first three years of his career. Obviously he will not be doing specialized work or on the heaviest or newest equipment, but I can guarantee you that there is no way he is going to be digging a ditch to see if "he has the right attitude". Do you think your doctor spent years, days, or seconds parking cars at the hospital before interning? How about a professional engineer? You can bet they wouldn't let a "newbie" build a bridge, but they sure as **** wouldn't expect or even think of asking that professional to do something that has nothing to do with his chosen profession. You will not find this bull in any other industry, and to have people claim that this is just the way things are, is patently ridiculous.

Anyone that thinks that a hoe operator should be paid what a pilot does is an idiot. Sure they work hard but if that is what you base pay on, why is a manual laborer not paid what a brain surgeon is.......surely he works as hard, if not harder. Pay in most of the worlds industries are based on the responsibilities the individual has, and the consequences if the job is not done properly. If you screw up digging a ditch, you simply straighten the line, or dig it deeper. Screw up flying your helicopter and at best you have hundreds of thousands dollars damage (if not millions) and at worst, bodies spread all over the ground.

Says the retired pilot who spends his days surfing pilot forums trying to convince them to form or join a union. Actually, I am not retired - I wish. And as you have made 500+ comments on these forums and I have made 60, I believe we have a serious case of the "pot calling the kettle black!" Believe me, I don't read your posts......I see the title and who wrote it, and move on.

Freewheel - may I suggest you drop this and get a life.

I agree totally with you Shakey. Heaven forbid that someone would dare to think that this industry is anything but perfect and the employees are treated like gold. We all know that management or owners will certainly take a serious cut in pay or work twice as hard/long, just like the employees!!!! And no doubt, sell some of their assets to ensure their employees can keep their jobs. And I would rather work with you any day rather than some pilot that has his/her nose jammed so far up the owners *** and hasn't the balls to say anything other than "treat me how you want, I love my job."

Though I had seen a KMax doing the fire fighting thing before, it was basically just the drop. One cannot help but be impressed with the video. Hard to imagine what they will be doing in ten years. I would strongly suggest those of you out there that are early in their pilot career, to write off your training costs as a really bad investment, and move on to something else.

I will admit it - I was wrong. A year or more ago I wrote that I doubted that I would be affected by drones in the few years I have left in the helicopter industry. Today I read an article by The Canadian Press titled "Drones get nod of approval for use in battling B.C.'s blazes." A spokeswoman for the BC Wildfire Service said drones have already been an important part of the battle against recent wildfires in northeastern BC because they are cheaper and safer than piloted aircraft. They can also be used at night, when most helicopters and planes are grounded. The spokesman said that allows firefighters to identify hot spots for immediate fire action at sunrise. To that, I say bullshit! I have fought fires in every province but the maritimes and I have never seen any crews head out anywhere near sunrise except to do an infrared scan. And that is not because they don't have any information gleaned from the night before. I don't doubt for a second that drones are cheaper than helicopters but if they really want to save money, maybe the helcos or fire bosses shouldn't be cruising around by themselves in a B3. As I pointed out in a previous post, the jobs the drones are taking are entry level ones. What a perfect place for a low time pilot to get hours by flying around in circles thousands of feet above everyone directing them to various hotspots. Or with two passengers with an infrared scanner, knowing that there will be no landing in tight spots or toe-ins, or whatever. For you operators out there with light/intermediate aircraft in your fleet, how many hours did you fly last year doing scans or helco work? You can kiss that work goodbye in the future. I suppose that one can only hope that many companies either go broke or downsize commensurate with the predicted loss of work and then all **** breaks loose one summer and there are no helicopters available to fight the fires. Remember the Kelowna fire of 2009? Do you know why it got so out of hand? Forestry or some bean counter in Victoria had decided they didn't need to have any aircraft on standby in the summer, getting paid for just sitting there, and there was no aircraft available to fight the fire when it was small and manageable. I only hope that the next time it happens, someone other than homeowners, has to pay a price....... with their jobs.

I have been quite involved with hydro in the past. Marker balls do burn off or are otherwise destroyed but I am surprised to hear that they are removing them. I was once told, by someone in the know, that hydro had settled out of court, every lawsuit that they had had involving aircraft and wires, because it was simply not worth it to take to court. There is a crossing over the Fraser River in the lower mainland that has orange and white towers, marker balls, and strobe lights, and when a float plane hit them, they sued and it was settled. It may not make you feel better, or do anything for safety, but it does put a bit of a different light on the subject. I don't know if Garmin gets sued if they miss a tower and someone hits it, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Brutal time delay. I would be very disappointed if I wasn't retired by then. And drones will have taken most of the work by then anyway, leaving a few jobs for the masses to fight over.

Just received notification from CARAC re flight duty times. I stand corrected and couldn't be happier unless they made it happen quicker, but still good news.

I have kids to raise and a wife I want to be with. I don't have a problem with my work conditions and my employer is fair so I'm just going to go to the hangar and love my job. Cheers, R Rotor May 2014 I got laid off the second the rain hit the coast after busting my *** all summer and the second I was supposed to collect some salary at home like I was promised, pink slip. I've gone contract. You want my skill - pay up. When you need me call. I'm done with promises. I've seen how that works. If you want a long term job and a pention you're in the wrong industry. Rotor November 2015 Seems maybe that you have changed your tune a little bit in the last couple of years. You have been in the industry for what, 17 years now ...... have you hit 1000 hrs. yet?

Alpha Dog - forget it. You might as well go and beat your head against a wall as trying to do anything in the industry when you have the likes of Helicopter Jim and Old who could give a rats *** about anything but themselves or 212 wrench with the childish "go do something else" comment. I am at the point where I think the only way to change the industry is to have a mandatory retirement age of say 50 so it can get rid of the old farts that think the industry has progressed fantastically because they no longer have to share a room with the engineer, or spend the entire summer - May to September - in a tent with no time off. By the way, I am one of those old farts, but one that thinks there is more to life than a cyclic and collective. As for the suggestion of HR in the industry partially funded by HAC - you do realize that HAC is a major part of the problem, and are interested in their members (just like a union, Rotor, but a different name)and that does not include anything to further aircrew interests.