To start the new year, Bond Offshore Helicopters took over the rig support contract out of Blackpool Airport for gas firm Centrica.  Bond have now moved in with two brand new bright red AS365N3 Dauphins, registered G-REDE and G-REDF, operating initially from temporary accommodation at this UK airport.  They had won the contract from CHC who previously flew earlier model AS365N2 equipment.  As a quirk of history, this contract was started back in 1978 by Management Aviation using two 365C models.  This company, along with North Scottish Helicopters, was owned by the Bond family – who merged these two companies in to Bond Helicopters later in the 1980s.  CHC THEN bought the offshore assets of Bond Helicopters in the 1990s, renaming it CHC Scotia, including the Blackpool operation.  Brothers Stephen and Peter Bond kept the onshore work under new name Bond Aviation Services, but in 2004 returned to the offshore market by launching Bond Offshore Helicopters – the company now running the Centrica contract at Blackpool.  “What goes around comes around”, they say.
Bond have an exciting and busy time ahead, with both this contract and another in the Southern North Sea both needing N3 Dauphins.  Two more are due for delivery shortly and a fifth is reportedly on order.
CHC started their move out around Christmas time by moving one Dauphin by road to Aberdeen, and were hoping to complete their contract utilising a single Dauphin.  Unfortunately this became unserviceable on 31st December, and they had to ferry a Sikorsky S76 in with spares for the Dauphin and to provide cover on the last day of operations.
As the new decade dawn on Friday, the Dauphin’s repairs were completed and it departed to orbit the iconic Blackpool Tower before a farewell flypast at the airport.  On the same day, the pair of Bond N3s were noted on flying their first missions out to the rigs, having already made several trips over the preceeding days on familiarisation sorties.