Jamie John - NHV

Background

The H175 programme was announced in 2005 as a joint venture between Airbus and Chinese manufacturer AVIC II. It was envisaged that this new aircraft would sit between the EC155 ‘Dauphin’ medium twin and the EC225 ‘Puma’ heavy twin helicopters in the Airbus range as a modern ‘super-medium’ type of helicopter. The 7,500kg MTOW aircraft (later certified for 7,800kg) was specified with the latest in safety features including Sea State 6 ditching performance, 30 MGB ‘run-dry’ capability and modern avionics systems.

At the time, the oil price was increasing rapidly and with it the levels of investment in oil and gas field development and supporting infrastructure and services. Sikorsky had just introduced the S-92 into service but it was envisaged that much of the work in demanding offshore locations such as the North Sea and Brazil and Australia could be performed with slightly smaller & more modern aircraft at a lower cost of acquisition and operation. Fifteen years later the ‘super-medium vs heavy’ debate continues unabated and has now become the third ‘no-go’ topic of conversation at dinner parties….

CURRENT FLEET

The H175 has (at the time of writing in December 2020) been in service for six years. The delivered fleet now stands at 43 aircraft with just over two thirds of these configured for Oil & Gas Crew Transfer. Other applications include seven highly-specified aircraft which are operating in Hong Kong, two VIP aircraft including one used for the Flying Fox yacht, a head-of-state aircraft and two demo aircraft.

The seven Hong Kong SAR aircraft reportedly cost $23m each and whilst they sit in the ‘SAR’ category here it is worth noting that they are complex multi-role aircraft that can perform a variety of missions including SAR, law enforcement, patient transport and aerial firefighting. Despite Airbus wanting to stick with numbers rather than names for their new aircraft, the HKFS reportedly wanted a name (having been previously used to ‘Dauhpins’ and ‘Pumas’) and after discussion with Airbus settled on ‘Guépard’ - French for ‘Cheetah’.

NHV made an initial order for ten aircraft and followed this up with an order for a further six. To-date, 13 of these have been delivered and NHV remain by far the most experienced H175 operator and top the table in terms of H175 fleet size.

With Bristow having quietly cancelled its H175 order during the Chapter 11 process, NHV remain the largest operator of the type and have consistently been so during the in-service period of the aircraft.

Babcock currently operate the H175 in the UK and Australia / East Timor and are presently moving units to Denmark (see below) and have thus become the second-largest operator of the type.

The Future

The existing fleet is expected to see some flux over the coming months. OMNI are rumoured to have won a contract package in Brazil with national operator Petrobras that calls for four H175s. OMNI took delivery of a new unit earlier in 2020 and are expected to lease additional units, two of the them sourced from a well known European operator that is exiting operations in Denmark.

Entering the market in Denmark with the H175 is Babcock MCS (the insistence earlier in the year that the oil and gas market is “no longer unattractive” to them isn’t particularly convincing given the number of contract wins they have chalked up since!). Babcock have taken delivery this month of a new unit, MSN 5038 G-CLTB (on lease from Milestone), direct from the factory at Marignane. They have also received a unit back from Spain that was undergoing maintenance (G-MCSE) and now lease MSN 5024 G-MCSN (again, from Milestone) that was previously operated by CHC in Aberdeen as G-EMEA. At the time of writing G-CLTB has been tracked flying to Esbjerg to begin service on the Total contract that Babcock won in the summer.

Airbus are fairly tight-lipped about the orderbook but are known to have several units complete and at a pre-delivery stage. One of these has been pictured recently at Marignane in ‘Belarus’ livery. Two additional SAR units for the Chinese Ministry of Transport are also understood to be being prepared for delivery in 2021. For the longer-term, the challenge with this type is finding the sweet spot between both the competition from heavier units and the inherent advantages of smaller units in terms of ease of reconfiguration and wider range of end-markets. The latter seems to have been behind a decision by Milestone to swap part of its H175 order for H160s, as reported by Dominic Perry in FlightGlobal recently. Airbus will no doubt be closely watching the oil markets for signs of recovery as this seems set to remain the dominant application for the type.

Could the H175 play a part in the energy transition? Whilst smaller twin-engine rotorcraft are typically favoured for offshore wind heli-hoisting (such as the H145, H135 and AW169) there is a role for larger rotorcraft in construction support of offshore windfarms. NHV have already used the H175 in the UK in support of the Beatrice windfarm project.

H175 Operations - Jamie John of NHV

NHV were the H175 launch customer and now have well over 50,000 hrs on the type. To find out some more about operating the largest fleet of H175s we spoke to Aberdeen Base Manager Jamie John:

Clearly an enormous amount of work has been done at Aberdeen to mitigate Covid risks. Are you anticipating any further work to be done?

We have robust measures in place and it feels like the norm now. The operational and safety teams here have been brilliant – we have had to react very quickly to the Covid crisis as it has emerged and then keep up with changes as the situation has developed over time.

We’re now in a relatively stable state and many of the measures in place have been there since March. Of course, we continue to learn and adapt and there are various small measures that continue to come through. A lot of our clients are going through Covid testing regimes and hopefully that will also manage to keep the level of infection down. Ultimately the guys and girls offshore are keeping the lights on for Britain and we’re proud to play our little part in that by getting them offshore and back.

There are restrictions in terms of the amount of people in the passenger terminal at any one time and so we space the flights out at least 30mins apart. This has the effect of extending the ‘flying day’ into the late afternoon or early evening. We have three briefing rooms and could normally handle three flights leaving at a similar time. So we are working a longer day but we have the correct amount of staff to manage that. We work with our clients and customers to ensure that the flight schedule meets their requirements, bearing in mind that we have passengers with onward travel further afield.

We have installed cabin barriers to keep separation between crew and you’ll see around the terminal we have erected Perspex screens and that’s allowed us to maintain safe separation on top of the PPE that everyone has to wear. And we all wear snoods when walking around the terminal.

You’ve opened a large new facility just down the road - what are you going to do with all that space?

In aviation terms it’s a logistics and maintenance hub where we can fit two aircraft in. So there’s two aircraft’s worth of storage plus a lot of office space which allows us to free up space in our operational hangar. It was always part of the growth plan, it wasn’t a Covid measure. The maintenance historically takes up around 40% of our operational hangar which restricted space and we were at full capacity with six aircraft. For our growth plan we have 9 aircraft and by the end of the year there will be eight here and we’ll have enough space to accommodate them. At the moment we have five on the line and two in maintenance. An additional unit will be coming over from Esbjerg.

We’ve seen the pictures of the exchange programme with Hong Kong for the H175 pilots. As the largest operator of the H175 is it fair to say the Aberdeen operation is viewed as a ‘Centre of Excellence’?

Our UK Flight Operations Manager, Chris Cooper set up the programme with the HK GFS and it allows the guys to come here and get experience of flying the H175 in a different environment. It actually all came about as a result of a meeting at the sim. The guys are all fitting in well and getting a lot of experience on the aircraft and it’s working really well. First two guys are through and we’re planning the next two.

We are the most experienced operator; we have been operating them for over 6 years so we have best in class experience of the H175 in oil and gas operations. With the number of hours we have on the aircraft it is the perfect place to come and get experience. They follow a training programme and what we get out of it is two highly qualified H175 pilots that can assist us with our operation here, they don’t fly the normal workload as maybe our line pilots would but it does give us extra operational flexibility, whilst they get the experience of operating in a completely different environment.

Are there any implications to your operations from the latest IOGP 690 recommendations?

In some parts of the world they will need to adapt but here in the North Sea we’re operating to the highest standards and many of the recommendations in the latest report are taken from that best practice. As an example, we send our pilots to the sim in France twice a year, that’s been in place for many, many years.

You mentioned taking an additional aircraft which is coming over from Esbjerg - how is the utilisation of your fleet just now?

Well, from a selfish point of view it’s a good time to take another aircraft… we are expecting more flying hours next year and also we are expecting some more time in maintenance with the 1,600 hr inspection, which normally takes 30-40 days, increased to more like 7-8 weeks depending what is being implemented. We do all our maintenance here of course. It’s still a learning process with the time it takes to do some of these tasks but some of the machines are mature now with 3 – 4 thousand hours.

What does the fleet age mean in terms of the clients, do they have age limits for aircraft? Does it carry weight with the clients having a new fleet and one of the latest-generation aircraft?

To be honest whilst I think it does, or at least it did, we’ve been here for five years now and are not so much the ‘new kid on the block’ anymore. If you look at the operators on the field here, we all offer the same fundamental service which is runway to rig and back. What we try and provide is the service levels - having the right capacity to support the clients. Nothing worse than having an aircraft but with nothing to back it up.

Is the ‘name of the game’ the same as the rest of the oil industry then, i.e. cost efficiency?

We’re a single-type operator here and we get efficiency from that in terms of our contracting, in terms of the pilots, and that sets us apart. If we went to a leasing company to get an aircraft tomorrow they would probably give us one at a similar rate to any other operator. The market rate for pilots, engineers etc. is probably very similar from operator to operator. But it’s the extras on top of that, international headquarters, other allocations at various different levels…. In terms of organisational structure, NHV is very flat. We might not be the cheapest option on the airfield here, but we try and be competitive without putting the business model in jeopardy.

We’ve seen some distressed sales of assets this year and in previous years as part of the fall-out of bankruptcies of other operators. Do you ever get tempted to pick up a couple of older, out of work S-92s or 139s at an attractive rate?

Well a cheap aircraft is a cheap until you have to start operating it, have pilots in it, having tooling for it, support contracts on that as well and you have to have work for it. Whilst there might be leasing companies around that are keen to provide an aircraft at attractive rates, the operational costs and costs of getting all the tooling in… that quickly makes it expensive and it’s hard to see how we would be able to put one of those aircraft to work in a more cost-efficient way than our competitors given the need to bring in tooling and parts. But ‘never say never’…. There’s no reason why we wouldn’t bring in another type if the client is right for us and we are right for the client and the product is right. For the H175 we are the specialists here in the super-medium segment and we do that pretty efficiently with the set-up we have here.

Up here in the North Sea the distance is the big problem, carrying sufficient fuel and passengers, we operate 7-ton machines down in Norwich and if you put that 7-ton machine up against a H175 then it’s a considerable difference operating to the same platforms. The H175 fuel tanks are the equivalent of a heavy. The choice of aircraft is determined by many things bit ultimately it all comes down to the application… our 175s would be too heavy for some of the decks down in the SNS… in some parts of the world you’re flying short distances with 8 or 9 people… you don’t need a large aircraft for that.

To what extent does the energy transition affect your work? Are you getting asked by clients to advise on environmental KPIs such as emissions per passenger mile etc?

Every month we report back fuel usage to our clients and we get some specific questions such as man hours. We report fuel usage per contract so they can understand the CO2 impact of that.

Does the H175 give you an advantage in this respect?

Well, you have a couple of hundred litres more fuel burn on a S-92 vs an H175 so it all comes down to how many passengers you need to transport and how many flights you have to make. The logistics departments in oil companies do a lot of work on this and we support them with information when they are making their decisions but it is up to them ultimately. We think newer platforms in mature producing areas are typically seeing fewer max POB which in some circumstances certainly works in our favour.

When we first started here it was very tough to change the mindset from always having 19 seats available to having 16. The downturn changed that, the installation of newer platforms has changed that as well.

How positive are you about the outlook for the next five years?

First and foremost, for me, the biggest thing is to ensure that for the current customers we have - we continue supporting them at the highest level. We want to be working with those clients after the next round of contracts.

We’re not going after every contract that comes up. That simply doesn’t make sense for us. What we do is look at each opportunity and consider if we are a good fit for them, and they are a good fit for us. There’s no ‘one-size-fits all’ option in oil and gas and we are honest about that with ourselves and our clients. We don’t want to over-sell anything but we don’t want to under-sell it either – ultimately the H175 is a very capable aircraft.

This year we have had a couple of campaigns being delayed and they will come back next year. The longer-term work will keep coming around as contracts expire, the only difference with that will be that the client base is shrinking as a function of M&A and we have seen that this year. So whilst the overall volume of underlying work may not change, the number of opportunities you have to bid for that work are getting fewer.

The other discipline we are looking at is windfarms. There are a lot being constructed off the east coast of England and Scotland and we have been heavily involved in this business in recent years. Our offering there is flying to helidecks in support of construction work. Commercially there are a lot of ideas out there including working with consortia of operators to provide helicopter support services but at the moment everyone is doing their own thing. You see a lot of experienced oil and gas rotary people moving into these wind farm operators so they are getting to grips with the performance of rotorcraft and the cost of running an aircraft. Some of these windfarms are as far out as the oil and gas platforms and we have no doubt there will be a demand not just for smaller twins but also larger aircraft such as the 139 and 175.

With sincere thanks to Jamie for his time and thoughts. We hope he enjoys and gets good utility from the extra H175 he is getting for Christmas!

Merry Christmas from us here at Air & Sea Analytics to everyone that is reading this, we hope that 2021 brings you health, happiness and prosperity.

Steve Robertson, Director

Air & Sea Analytics

sr@airandseaanalytics.com

Above: A variety of H175s in operation in October 2020 at Aberdeen Airport. Images: Air & Sea Analytics.