14 March 2024

On the 11^th March 2020 the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic. National lockdowns followed shortly in many countries and the pandemic caused extensive disruption to the fixed wing aviation business and in the offshore crew change sector we saw in the immediate aftermath a 30-40% reduction in flight volume. Helicopter operators and OEMs acted quickly to ensure offshore operations could continue and adopted a number of practices and aircraft modifications to ensure reduced opportunity for transmission of the virus and also to provide means to safely extract sick offshore workers and bring them to shore for treatment. By late summer 2020, aircraft were able to fly a full load of passengers with precautions such as regular testing, spacing of flights/personnel in the terminal, masks & ‘snoods’ and screens between pilots and passengers in the cabin.  

Four years on, offshore manning levels have subsequently returned to normal or near-normal and at the time of writing we are seeing overall flight activity in excess of pre-Covid levels for most aircraft types. Weekly flight patterns can vary and particularly so in winter months when seasonal holidays, and bad weather (such as fog or very high winds) can impact flight activity.  

The H175 has seen a strong increase in the number of offshore crew transfer flights in the last two years as a function of new deliveries (8 into offshore at the time of writing), aircraft coming out of long-term maintenance (including maturity programme work) and movement of aircraft to regions such as Brazil where the number of flights flown per day tends to be higher than some other offshore regions. Airbus’ maturity programme is paying dividends with several H175s logging more than 1,300 hrs each in 2023 whereas only two years prior none of the fleet were flying at this intensity. Airbus has a strong order book for the type and spoke recently of “quadrupling” production capacity.  

The AW189 programme has been busy over the last four years but more so in the military and SAR markets and a total of three units have been delivered to the offshore fleet during this time. This will change in the coming years as orders from Bristow and oil companies are delivered. Leonardo have been busy improving the performance of the aircraft for the offshore market through a substantial weight reduction programme on both the standard and extended range models. In addition, the AW189 is fully FIPS (Full Ice Protection System) certified and this will lend itself well to applications in and around the North Sea, for example. 

The S-92 has seen a more-gradual recovery in activity and has been hampered by supply-chain problems and the challenges in returning aircraft to service. As discussed at the recent Sikorsky Appraiser event at HAI, we commend the OEM for shipping over 230,000 parts last year, but it is the lack of availability of 10-15 or so critical assemblies and components (e.g. gear boxes, main rotor dampers, windshields, heat exchangers, floats, etc.) that is hampering the dispatch reliability of the type. For most of the weeks in Q4 2023 we have seen S-92 activity levels in excess of pre-Covid levels. Only two S-92s have been delivered in the offshore market since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the current announced orderbook for offshore S-92s is zero albeit much speculation remains concerning the 14 unbuilt cabins. At HAI 2024 Sikorsky confirmed that as and when these remaining cabins are built they will be S-92A+ units with the latest Phase IV gearbox and 27,700lb gross weight upgrade and the newer CT6-8A6 engines. This will offer improved safety benefits (run-dry performance, one engine inoperative performance) and a notable improvement in payload/range performance.

We will monitor activity in this mission critical market with continuing interest. If you have any questions or queries on this article or would like bespoke work around the topic generally, please do not hesitate to get in touch. 

Kind regards 

Steve