threepoint wrote:STL, you raise some good points, but let's be clear on a few things:
Helicopters are certainly NOT cheap to own, operate and move around. Comparing the daily availability, hourly operating and fuel costs between a large fixed-wing airtanker and a medium helicopter can provide a jarring change in perspectives. Helicopters are ****ing expensive when compared to airtankers. Admittedly nothing in aviation is cheap.
Pilots of both fixed & rotary aircraft are treated, well, the same. Both have expectations of being on alert for defined periods at airports or camps. Both are bound by the same duty day limitations. Both can sit around all day swatting flies, or grunt it out all day in a hot sweaty cockpit. Both get the same amount of time off per evening to rest and eat. Whether that is enough time can be debated - but I frequently see airtanker pilots arrive on base before helicopter pilots, so it works both ways.
In BC, in a lot of cases, the govt provides food. Decent food too (OK sure, maybe not of the calibre found on the Food Network). I have seen camps cater to pilots who are often among the only people sitting in the mess tent at lunchtime - I used to wonder if helicopters were designed to run low on fuel as noon approached. Camps frequently send bag lunches out to the line and pretty much every town has a hotel or restaurant that will prepare a bagged lunch if the pilot has the foresight to order it the night before. Honestly, sometimes it staggers me how pilots forget that they'll likely be hungry around noon the following day and remain surprised out in a field somewhere when the firefighters, equipment operators and first aid staff all open their lunches that they brought from town.
I think it speaks more to the heli companies that are "happy to sit on spec" than it does to the contracting agencies. Many heli companies are NOT happy to sit on spec; they secure long-term fire contracts (identical in structure to those for airtankers by the way) or find work in other industries or remain at their home bases. If you are chasing fires on spec, perhaps a revised business plan may be in order - foolish are those that rely only on fires to sustain their income.
Finally, while swinging our John Thomases on this forum, let's not make statements like "please don't tell me you have a better idea how the whole show runs than my coworkers or I do..." Because in some relevant subjects, I do. In others, I probably don't. Assertive statements-of-fact that "tanker pilots never have to kill mice" proves to me that you've never visited a base in coastal BC where mice & mold reign supreme. Sometimes if you repeat certain things often enough, you can fall prey to believing them...
It seems to me you are largely missing the point.
To write a long response detailing how identically RW and FW fire suppression pilots are treated makes interesting reading, but still does not make your assertions correct. You talk about lunches that pilots neglect to bring? I'm not sure what bearing that has on anything, if you can't remember lunch, well you deserve what you get regardless of who is providing it, but you are comparing apples and oranges seemingly from the perspective of an outsider, albeit one employed by the hiring agency (correct me if I am wrong), enough said. I stated my point much earlier in this thread. There is no "swinging of John Thomases" going on here at all, and I take offense to the suggestion, it is simply first hand experience refuting the claim that we are treated equally. Call it what you will, but bravado or chest thumping it is not.
As to "spec" only companies, well, they will do what they see fit during the summer months, and while I could never personally survive the stress of that particular business model from and ownership perspective, I have done it enough on the flying end to tell you it is no life for the long term, yet it persists. Why is that? Are all the Owners mad? Are they all starving each winter? Or is there something to it....? Are there enough "Contract" machines to suffice and all the "Spec" people are just crackpots who can't run a business as your tone suggests? I think not, but they sure do provide quick, easy, and cheap (when compared to seasonal hire) insurance when things get hot and crunchy... The Gov't loves the "Spec" game, if they didn't, then there would be about three times the "Contract" ships on expensive, guaranteed long term deals, am I wrong?
You make it sound like the companies who have their act together are on long-term contracts... If I'm reading that properly I can only say I would sooner stop flying altogether than work for some of the these companies, while some of the Spec folks run fabulous first-rate operations, so again, I'm not sure of your point?
While you are on the topic of "Contact" helis that are on seasonal Provincial hire, perhaps you can shed some light on the average rates paid to those operators across the country for said machines and how those rates compare to regular tariffs found in other industry applications? It's often brutal, and in the case of Alberta in particular, an absolute farce with some ships going for less than half of what they would or should on charter. Why? Among many factors, too many machines - too many cheap machines that are leased by their operators or otherwise used to stimulate little more than cash flow for others, and an industry with precious little going on in the mining or logging sectors the last couple of years which normally sucks up a great number of machines. Lack of hiring standard only exacerbates the issue. The fire agencies know this and take full advantage. This year in BC we saw machines stacked up waiting in turn for hire all over the Province, with BCFS pulling strings like a puppet master, I was one of them for a time. On one minute, released the next despite no change in hazard level or weather, no rhyme or reason to it other than a grossly exceeded budget in 2009, and apologies all around from the old hands in BCFS for the way it was going. I can understand this, it's the practicalities of the beast, and I would hate to be the guy at the Forest Service in charge, but again, I can't imagine the unionized Conair folks going through the same thing. It's a totally different animal.
There are a number of long serving, now retired, Foresters who are more than frustrated with the current state of affairs right across the board, from Silviculture to Fire Suppression, and with good reason. As with everything else these days, it seems we are in a race to the bottom.
Believe what you will, it seems little I say will change or influence your opinion. Perhaps we can hash it out over a beer sometime this coming summer? As with anything, there are good days, and there are bad days. Most rotary wing pilots enjoy some time on fires, but need to get away and back to "industry," while others won't even partake after trying it out for a while.
stl
