Old procurement joke...

A good plan with funding is a DREAM.  


A good plan without funding is a HALLUCINATION.  


Funding without a good plan is a NIGHTMARE.  

Why helicopters?

Helicopter lease rates in the Gulf of Mexico can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a MONTH, with added surcharges for fuel, extra hours, and night flights... how can anyone afford to pay such rates, and why does everybody seem to travel by helicopter in the gulf?  


1. Particularly in support of drilling operations, time is money. A deepwater drilling rig may lease for over $500K/day, and if the drilling project is held up for a day because the rig needs a part or a specialized contractor to move forward, the added expense for helicopter support is a mere rounding error in the drilling budget, which is in the multi millions for each well drilled.  


This brings up an interesting point.  If oil companies are making those obscene profits, do you imagine that any of those profits are rolled into further exploration, which is obscenely expensive?  And do you think that each time they drill a hole that they actually HIT something that gives them a big payoff?  Sometimes. And sometimes they're just out several million for a dry hole.  It happens.  


2. Drilling and production operations are quite geographically dispersed even in the Gulf of Mexico, and the tendency is to move toward deeper water, further and further out.  If you have twenty or thirty people spread out at various locations up to 150 miles offshore, a relatively fast crew boat (20 knots or so) can take 18 hours to do a crew change, while a couple of helicopters can pull the same crew change before lunch gets cold.  A large drilling operation can easily have 80-100 people on board one rig.  Figure in additional overtime costs for paying your outgoing crews for the delay, and the high rates for third party contractors waiting on transportation, and the helicopter again begins to look like a pretty good deal.  


3. Some deepwater exploration projects are served by increasingly larger and more expensive aircraft such as the Sikorsky S-92, which sells for around $20 million per copy.  There are reasons for this too, and reasons that companies are willing to pay a premium for such aircraft.  


One is that newer and more capable aircraft are safer, with additional power and up to date survivability equipment if the worst happens and the helicopter does go down.  Top tier companies are willing to pay a premium for the safety of their people, mindful of the costs of cutting corners and the price of liability and lawsuits.   


The second is a function of distance offshore.  The FAA limits a two-pilot crew to ten hours of flight time per day.  If a round trip to a location 250 miles offshore takes 4 flight hours, then you get two trips per day, per helicopter, period.  


So the ONLY way to increase your throughput of people in and out of your deepwater properties is to use faster aircraft (more flight time per day) or bigger aircraft (more seats on each flight).  


And now you know. 

Another pilot joke...

What's the difference between a pizza and a copilot?


The pizza can feed a family of four.  

The One Moose Airplane

A cautionary tale in aircraft overloading and customer pressure. 


Not a true story, but it happens every day...


Once there was an Alaskan Bush Pilot who flew hunters in his floatplane on contract to remote locations.  He was hired by two hunters who he flew to a remote lake and agreed to return in three days to pick them up.  The pilot warned the hunters in no uncertain terms that he only had a ONE MOOSE AIRCRAFT, and no matter how many moose they bagged on their hunting trip, they could only load ONE MOOSE aboard the aircraft for the return trip.  


As scheduled, three days later, the bush pilot returned to the lake and was chagrined to find that the hunters had bagged TWO moose, and were adamant about wanting to take both of them on the airplane.  


The pilot explained that it was a one moose aircraft, and one moose was all it could carry.  


The hunters countered that both moose were field dressed, and kind of scrawny, and therefore added up to maybe 1.25 moose at best.  


The pilot didn't buy it, and launched into a long boring diatribe about aircraft weight and balance, Federal Aviation Regulations, risking his license and livelihood, etc. etc.  


The hunters mentioned that one of them knew a pilot once who had a completely different interpretation of federal law as it applied to moose carriage, and that the game wardens really didn't care anyway, so what was the big deal?  


Growing increasingly irritated as this stalemate was delaying his already packed charter schedule, the pilot stated that if they wanted to go out, they were going with one moose, and no more than one moose, end of discussion.  


The hunters began to openly speculate on the condition of the aircraft, the payment arrangement for the flight, the reasons that the pilot was still single, and moreover, stated that the previous year, on the same lake, with the same type aircraft, another pilot had flown out with two moose on their previous trip, and what exactly was his problem anyway?  


Gritting his teeth, the pilot agreed to carry the two moose, as the sun was beginning to go down and it was pointless to argue any longer.  As the moose were loaded, the floatplane nearly swamped its floats from the weight of the two moose.  


Configuring the floatplane for a maximum performance takeoff, the pilot water taxied to the far end of the lake and performed the best takeoff he could muster with all the power the airplane had.  Performance was weaker than expected and at the far end of the lake, he was forced to bank around trees as he squeezed every ounce of performance out of the floatplane that he could.  Engine straining and wings bending, it appeared that they might make it, but the two moose were too much.  The airplane settled into the trees, chopping off first the tops of trees, then small branches, then larger branches, then finally somersaulting into the undergrowth in an ugly wreck.  


It was a horrific scene.  Moose meat hung from low branches, the smell of jet fuel mixed with the smell of fresh cut pine and fresh cut aluminum.  Mercifully, the pilot and hunters were knocked unconscious but not killed.  


Half an hour later, one hunter, waking up from his stupor, yelled out to the other hunter "where are we?"


The second hunter, looking around to gain his bearings, said "I think we're about a hundred yards from where we ended up last year".