Drill Movers

[Fred Lewis]

An interesting document on this topic is published by HAC is their Oil & Gas Land Exploration Best Practices and is viewable on their website. The FDT limits, detailed in chapter 9, are less onerous than those stipulated in the CAR.

 

On HAC’s home page this statement is made:

 

“The airlines and their unions have been discussing 28-day Duty Hour limits of 190 to 200 hours and 60-65 Duty Hours in seven days and 100-130 Duty Hours in 14 days. HAC will have nothing to do with this discussion. No consideration has been given to remote, seasonal or extended daylight Northern Operations. Imagine, flying two hours each day in a series of 7, 9, or 14 consecutive 14-hour duty days, and then explaining to your customer that the regulations say you are too fatigued to fly.”

 

The Best Practices document seems to be at odds with this as in fact some consideration has been given by HAC to “remote, seasonal or extended daylight Northern Operations.”. Perhaps HAC can clarify this apparent contradiction.

 

It may be the case that while HAC resists the legislation of stricter FTD rules they do recognize that some helicopter operations are much more demanding than others and allowance must be made for this. It is likely that the considerable input of the ever-increasingly safety conscious oil and gas sector had a great deal to do with it. This would be a case of customer-driven safety initiatives. It should be the other way around. Helicopter operators, or better yet TC, should be the ones driving helicopter safety. Never the less, the FTD suggestions made in the HAC O & G best practices document is a welcome step in the right direction.

 

Another aspect of the best practices document demanding comment is the risk matrix detailed on page 47. While risk matrices may be a tool for stimulating discussion of safety issues, they are useless for determining risk in any kind of rational, quantitative way. It is guaranteed that insurance companies, who must accurately determine probability in a strict statistical way, will have nothing to do with these matrices. For those who are prepared to endure a bit of arithmetic, a piece entitled Risk in Aviation is attached.

Risk in Aviation2.doc

[cab driver]

I work 200-230 days a year, moving drills. Typically make six figures, and tours vary from three to six weeks. The longer tours are usually good jobs I don't want to leave too soon.

 

Would I turn down more money for less work? Of course not. But do I have much to complain about? Not really.

 

Is the grass really that much greener on the IFR/EMS/offshore side of the fence?

[Jet B]

I just got tired of pooping in an outhouse so I'm taking a break and going to chase fires on 212's this summer.

 

Sorry.

[flyheli]

There are definitely less foreigners flying in Canada this year. I assume that a major reason is that all the temporary work permits are expired by now and can't get renewed or issued anymore.

The remaining pilots with talent were either still employed or were picking the jobs with reputable companies EARLY this year. I've heard many times from pilots who were looking for work this spring that getting in touch with some of those companies which were advertising wasn't a pleasant experience if they mentioned that they've never moved a drill.

 

Some of you mentioned that many are going the IFR route.... I don't think there are that many IFR jobs out there in Canada... maybe overseas? STARS pays less than 60k for FOs... that's probably a lot lower what that talented pilot we are talking about was used to earn so I don't think that that many would go for that for a more regular schedule.

[Daz]

Might be time for them to step up and put some time and money into some younger up and comers.

 

 

 

Out of genuine curiosity, at what experience level does a pilot become "viable" for drill move training?

[heliguy1]

I think that the 2 pilot requirement that some clients have is affecting things for the worse. Because some of them only allow a 12 hour duty day, you need 2 pilots to service a drill job since the drillers work 12 hours. So instead of one pilot working a 14 hour duty day and flying maybe 3 hours a day with a few breaks here and there, you have 2 guys sharing the work. One guy will work the morning and the other guy will work the afternoon. So they fly 1.5 each maybe. Nobody likes this on the pilot side but that's what the clients want. And both guys need to be experienced and fully capable so it's not like this is helping bring up any new guys. Maybe the demand will be higher across the board so there will be room for new guys but there will also be guys going out to work that maybe shouldn't be because there's no one else. So the incident rate might go up, which is the exact opposite of what the 12 hr duty day is supposedly going to do. These guys that make these rules need to get their heads examined. Every one I've met is ex-military, fixed-wing or offshore IFR. So their experts aren't expert in anything that we do. Drives me nuts.

 

A quick question Hiller. Is this 2 pilot/12 hour duty day prevalent in the mining sector? If it does progress that way one can only assume the experienced pilots will bail out of that market.

[Deep Throat the third]

Well back in the day before so many customers had minimums I started moving drills at 600 hours, it wasn't pretty but the job got done safely! and no drillers were harmed in the process.

[sirlandsalot]

Rotations and Pay...bottom line me thinks.

 

I know many guys that are fed up with the 6 to 8 weeks on and 2 off. I love my job but I love my family too...as a matter of fact, I love my family more! More than happy to go and give 100% and please the client and sell the company ect ect.., but not at the expense of my family. The problem is if you dare say no to a tour or extension then you get the old "I have a stack of resumes this high on my desk" answer and some keener than keen guy goes in and does it all and there you are with no work because you want to be part of your family.

 

As far as the money, well we all know the answer to that one.

 

I get the shivers just at the thought of going up north and moving drill! LOL!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I should probally point out too, I work for this company and my family and I are happy with my rotation and pay, I think the biggest problem here lies with the client requirments for pilots. There are always a good group of lower time pilots that are very slick on the longline.

[Deep Throat the third]

And I second that Sirlandsalot!! in 19 years I have never worked for a better group of people than those at GSHL.

[heliguy1]

I should probally point out too, I work for this company and my family and I are happy with my rotation and pay, I think the biggest problem here lies with the client requirments for pilots. There are always a good group of lower time pilots that are very slick on the longline.

 

Are you facing this 12 hour day moving diamond drills as well? Or is this primarily oil and gas?