An official court-filed statement provides a lot more information about the situation at CHC.  It was filed by Michael B Cox, Global Head of Seabury’s Corporate Advisory Services.  Seabury was retained by CHC Group and each of the other debtors (collectively, the “Debtors”) in early 2016 to provide strategic business advice with respect to restructuring CHC’s fleet of helicopters. Cox lead the Seabury team in providing fleet restructuring strategy and advice to CHC including analysis of CHC’s fleet financing arrangements and current market conditions, lender/lessor negotiating strategies and fleet planning

CHC maintains a fleet of approximately 230 helicopters, of which they own 67 and lease the other 153 from a variety of lessors.  The Debtors have undertaken to accelerate their fleet replacement strategy in exiting from non-revenue generating aircraft and five older technology helicopter types, in order to first meet their customers’ demands for newer technology helicopters and then reduce the number of different helicopters types in their fleet.

The Debtors expect to reduce their fleet to approximately 75 aircraft by 2017, with approximately 90 aircraft to be returned in the next 60 days. The near-term returns include approximately 16 Sikorsky S-76, 18 Airbus AS332, 16 Sikorsky S-92, 20 Airbus H225, 1 Airbus EC155 and 19 AgustaWestland AW139 helicopters.  These account for approximately half of the fleets of Airbus types, and one third of the fleets of Sikorsky types.  No mention has been made of the Bell 412s currently in CHC operation.

Doing the sums, that would take them from 230 to 140 in the next 60 days and a further 65 would go by 2017 to take them to the 75 number.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com