Among offshore support operators in the Gulf of Mexico, PHI Aviation is an undoubted force to be reckoned with. Gideon Ewers went to Houma to find out more.
This article is from the October/November 2024 issue of RotorHub International. To read more articles like this, apply for your complimentary subscription today.
PHI’s deepwater offshore support operations and flight operations
In the Cajun patois of Southern Louisiana, the phrase “gettin waaay out dere” has a variety of meanings – not all of them complementary, but all of them colourful. It could also describe the practice of deepwater offshore support in the Gulf of Mexico.
PHI is embarking on a service entry programme for the Airbus H160, being the first to operate the type in the United States.
While PHI has an extensive business outside the offshore support role, this article confines itself to the company’s Gulf of Mexico operation and in particular the flight operations at Houma.
Historically, the bulk of offshore energy support work in the Gulf was found in the shallow waters of the Texas-Louisiana shelf, with depths between 20 and 100 metres extending from about 14 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi Delta to just over 100 miles offshore from the coast at Port Arthur on the Texas-Louisiana state line.
Indeed, it is fair to say that it is here that both offshore oil expropriation and its support by helicopters began, and that PHI or as it was in those days Petroleum Helicopters Inc was at the forefront with its 1949 founding with three Bell 47s.
This came just eight years after the first “offshore” strike in the Creole field, a staggering one mile offshore in waters a monumental 13 ft deep!
Going long – PHI’s offshore support helicopter services
As offshore exploration and production grew and advanced and moved progressively offshore, so did the aircraft used to support it, with S-55s and S-58s coming to the fore before the introduction of turbines and the rise of the 206 and 212 as support platforms.
At that time, aircraft tended to be based in small numbers at a number of bases along the Gulf coasts of Louisiana and Texas, reflecting the range limitations of the earlier aircraft.
These days, most of the shallow water wells and production is played out and those structures are being removed. In today’s environment, rigs are more typically found in water depths of 1,000 to 3,000 metres sited more than 100 nm offshore.
Further out meant more range and the scope of missions began to grow. Happily, at the same time, longer range aircraft also entered the market – including what remains, for the moment at least, the workhorse of offshore support, the S-92.
VP Operations at PHI, Pat Attaway, says:
“When I first started flying offshore support, it was mostly in a 206 and 50 miles offshore was considered a very long leg. We often night-stopped on the rigs as well. These days that’s a rarity, but back then with range limits it happened quite a lot.”
Another thing that is very different from those days is navigation. As Attaway recalls, it was dead reckoning time and distance, and with no aids it was oceanic work.
That state of affairs continued until ADS-B came along. In fact, until 2009 there was no ADS-B capability in the Gulf of Mexico at all.
“It came to be that the FAA and other regulators wanted to have coverage, primarily to increase throughput of airline traffic,” says Attaway. “So they asked oil companies if transmitters could be placed on rigs, and we told the oil companies that it would be a useful thing for us too.”
According to the FAA, because of that 2009 initiative high-altitude traffic capacity has been boosted thanks to lateral separation reductions – and for the helicopter world, IFR flight plan filings have tripled.
“All good things,” says Attaway, “but without us, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Leading edge – Offshore support safety with ADS-B expansion
Besides being at the forefront of initiatives like ADS-B expansion, the company has also been on the leading edge of the curve when it comes to the deployment of new aircraft.
Introducing a new aircraft is a rather more complex business than it may appear. Here PHI’s H160 team are defining the baggage hold modifications.
It was the launch customer for the S-92 and is currently embarking on a service entry programme for the PHI H160 – being the first to operate that aircraft in the United States, PHI has its first aircraft going through service entry.
Attaway says that while the OEMs are excellent at building aircraft, it is the operators who understand what happens when they are actually on the line.
“We learnt a lot when we brought the S-92s into service and since then we’ve used that experience to introduce the AW139s and H145s here and now the H160.”
It’s a process that will take an estimated eight to 12 months in total and begins with work to ensure the aircraft is user-friendly.
This will be followed by route proving and finally operational proving flights with passengers.
More than likely, since the company already operates the type in Australia, it will be an early adopter of the H175 when that type completes FAA certification.
“We like what super-mediums can do,” says Attaway, “and that’s where operations are going.”
The lion’s share – Building operations in Houma, Louisiana
But we are getting ahead of the story. As mentioned earlier, the trend in the early days was to have aircraft spread over a large number of bases. That became impractical and progressively the company began to concentrate its operations at its own heliport at Morgan City.
Now PHI has just two bases serving clients in the Gulf – Galveston in Texas and Houma in Louisiana – with Houma taking the lion’s share.
As a result, Houma is the second busiest airport in Louisiana and arguably its busiest heliport.
But why Houma? It’s a question I put to Attaway.
“Really, it’s a simple answer,” he says. “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, they were a month apart and you can’t overstate how they devastated this part of the coast – it was completely destroyed. We did find a way to get operations up and running quickly, but it wasn’t easy.”
The impact on the New Orleans area is well known, and while the impact on the Galveston area from Rita was not as extreme, it was nonetheless a game changer for business continuity.
As a result, the company began looking at ways to make its operation more “hurricane resistant”.
Among the moves was the establishment of a greater capacity at Houma. Although nowhere along the Gulf Coast is particularly elevated compared with sea level, Houma is regarded as a better bet than Morgan City.
Houma sits at nine feet AMSL and Galveston at six feet AMSL – and while Morgan City is only a couple of feet lower than Houma, the presence of the Atchafalaya River makes it more susceptible to storm surge inundation.
Consequently, PHI began a build-up of the operation at Houma.
North and east – Ramps in Houma’s base
It is first important to understand the nature of the operation there, which can be described as being a “game of two halves”.
On the one hand there is the East ramp located within the confines of the Houma-Terrebonne Airport, and the North ramp – which although situated alongside the airport is an independent and private heliport outside the boundary of the airport property, making for some interesting ATC.
Activities at the East base are primarily maintenance and integration – the PHI H160 team are housed on that side of the operation, as well as pipeline inspection, and the majority of the 407s operate from that side.
While much of the aircraft monitoring and management is computerised, the information still starts with a paper log in the North Ramp Tower – as aircraft co-ordinator Jennifer Jones demonstrates.
The North base is where the action happens for the rest of the offshore support operation, and is home to AW139s, S-92s, S-76C++s and H145s.
The build-up of activity and base capability began with the storm clean-up and naturally segued into growth of the ramp space, as well as progressive extensions to the facility’s FATO (final approach and take-off area), which is now 703 metres (2,300 ft).
This means performance Class 1 criteria are met comfortably, even for fully loaded aircraft on a typical summer day where temperatures can reach 40C.
While there may be further work to ramps and taxiways where the goal is to reduce hover taxi and FATO back taxiing at peak times, the emphasis has shifted in recent times to infrastructure devoted to line maintenance and passenger handling.
Currently in the final stages of construction are on the west side of the FATO a 39,960 sq ft line maintenance hangar. Or to put it another way, ample room for up to six S-92s to be accommodated simultaneously.
In addition to the shop floor, the facility will also have 1,250 sq ft of maintenance office space, a break room for mechanics and a waiting room for people picking up arriving passengers.
The entire edifice has a floor height raised by six feet so that it is above the height of a 15 ft storm surge. (For reference, Katrina’s highest measured storm surge was around 11.5 ft, although it may have been closer to 14 ft in some areas).
The arrival area is designed to make it easier and more convenient for arriving passengers to be on their way home, since the vast passenger car parks are also located on that side of the FATO. While a shuttle bus service operates constantly, the goal is to reduce passenger waiting times to the minimum.
New facilities – Passenger terminals and hangars
On the eastern side of the FATO, a new passenger terminal is being constructed – or, more accurately, an extension of one of the current two buildings used as terminals, which will add nearly 19,000 sq ft to the outbound passenger area comprising check in, security and screening areas, waiting rooms and pre-departure briefing rooms.
Once the new facility is in service, like the maintenance hangar expected to open early in 2025, the area occupied by the defunct terminal space will be repurposed.
Also on the east side is the flight planning office, as well as customer liaison offices. Operations are controlled from the company wide ops room in Lafayette.
In addition, and for the next few months, there is the existing (one S-92 sized) line maintenance hangar and office, as well as the climate controlled ready use stores.
The bulk of the company’s spares inventory being held at its headquarters and MRO facility like operations in Lafayette.
The ready use stores are replenished, as always supply chain willing, with nightly deliveries from Lafayette, which is around two hours by road from Houma.
In addition to the passenger terminals and so forth, the next element lies across Taxi Road, the approach road to the facility. These are accommodation units for both pilots and maintenance staff, who work a two week on, two week off pattern and who tend to live some distance from Houma.
“They are actually pretty nicely appointed,” says John Ellyson, Director of Maintenance at PHI. “If you think about it, the guys spend half the year living in them, so they have to be. Of course, the pilots tend to live further away, but either way it makes for a great commute when you are on shift.”
A day in the life – Staff operations at Houma, Louisiana
So then, what does a day at Houma look like? Around the world, the tendency is for energy support operations to be very much a morning activity, and the Gulf of Mexico is no different.
“Of course, we fly when our customers want us to and they like to get people out and back from the rigs as early as they can,” says Attaway. “It makes sense as a lot of them have a long drive or plane ride when they get back here.”
Broadly speaking, operations at Houma run in three waves, with first departures at 06:00 and flying more or less complete by mid-afternoon.
Houma’s working day starts at 04:00 with the arrival of the day shift line maintenance teams, who make a start on any engine runs required before first flight checks.
Consequently, the day begins around 04:00 with the arrival of the day shift line maintenance teams, who make a start on any engine runs required before first flight checks.
At the same time, the check-in and security staff arrive ready to begin processing the first wave’s passengers.
Key to that check-in process are the kiosks that run the Helipass passenger handling system.
The suite of products from Helipass is a mind-boggling array of processes analysis and operations management, with passenger handling just one element.
Jered Gaspard, VP Business Development at Helipass, says: “The key to this is that beyond the things that you’d expect a passenger handling system to do in the airline environment, our system does a lot more. We have to be a lot more accurate with weight and balance obviously.
“Then there are the requirements that the customer might have on top of that. Is the passenger up to date with their licence or certification currency that their job requires? Are they up to date with the HUET training?
“If the customer has a drug screening programme, we can put random selections into the process. Basically, anything the customer wants to have in the system, we can put it in.”
And of course, it’s not a one size fits all – the requirements for one company can and probably are different from the next.
That can be a factor for contractors working for more than one energy company, with potential for confusion. A potential which the system avoids by setting up a dialogue with passengers long before they arrive for their outbound flight via app-based messaging.
“For example,” says Gaspard, “we can send a message to a passenger like ‘Your crane operation safety certificate has to be renewed before your next duty’ as they come off shift. We can also update them of any changes or delays to their outbound flight.”
Attaway adds: “It makes a lot of difference to the crowding around here too. The energy companies used to tell their workers ‘Be there at 04:30” no matter what time they were actually flying, so this improves things all around.”
Back and forth – Seamless travelling
Arriving passengers park in the vast passenger lot, which has now grown to 12 acres after a recent extension.
They then take one of the shuttle buses which run from 04:30 constantly to the appropriate terminal – for the next few months anyway. From early next year, operations will be unified in the new terminal.
Processing complete, they then pass through to a waiting room and onward to the final briefing. Meanwhile, baggage makes its own way to the aircraft.
At 05:00 the first flight crews arrive to begin flight planning for their first sortie of the day. With payload data taken from check-in, they can add their fuel loading.
The Helipass system takes this data and passes it to ramp controllers, who manage everything on the aprons and FATO including fuelling and passenger transport.
Passengers are transported from the terminals to the aircraft via a fleet of stretched golf buggies to keep everything tightly controlled – and with a ramp area nearly two kilometres long, even in the pre-dawn hours the summer heat and humidity don’t make the walk an appealing prospect.
Close to 06:00 the first aircraft start moving, and that movement turns rapidly into an avalanche of departures. Within 40 minutes, what was once a packed area looks rather barren.
From around 08:30 the first aircraft begin to appear on their return trips and the line maintenance teams move into action – their first task being to download the arriving aircraft’s HEMS data so it can be analysed well before the aircraft’s next scheduled departure.
As Ellyson explains, HEMS data forms not only the cornerstone the company’s tactical or line maintenance response, it also is a vital tool in trend monitoring.
Not only that, the flight data monitoring also helps the company understand how its aircraft are actually being flown and track any trends divergent from its own and manufacturers’ standard operating procedures.
By 10:00 and then again at around 13:00 the second and third departure waves get into their strides, though they do not have the intensity of the first wave as arrivals from the earlier waves build a natural stagger into the operation.
By mid-afternoon the ramp is once again full as the fleet returns from “waaay out dere” and becomes once again the domain of the maintenance teams working the line.
Houma’s working day starts at 04:00 with the arrival of the day shift line maintenance teams, who make a start on any engine runs required before first flight checks..
Hurricane resilience – PHI in Houma, Louisiana
Hurricanes are a fact of life in the Gulf of Mexico. There are some years when there are more storms than others, but it’s almost guaranteed that there will be a storm or storms threatening one part of the Gulf or another every season.
A further complication is the wayward nature of tropical storms. What can appear to be a relatively benign tropical storm system can blossom in 24 hours into a Category 5 monster and vice versa. What looks like a storm that will cause major disruption can suddenly weaken or change course.
To counter that threat, PHI has developed a hurricane resilience strategy in three parts. These cover what is going to happen offshore – in terms of rig crew evacuations, how operations are going to be maintained, and finally how infrastructure and equipment are protected.
Attaway says that liaison with their own and customer meteorological services is almost daily. Even when there are no active systems, the potential for development is always there. (At the time of writing there are three areas which the US National Hurricane Center says have a 40 per cent chance of development.)
As the system develops, so do rig evacuation plans and flight planning. If a storm looks to threaten either the Galveston or Houma bases, then the next phase is to begin evacuation of equipment – all of it from the area under threat. To do that, PHI has a contract with United Vision Logistics which means they have a dedicated fleet of 18-wheel trucks on standby between June and October.
In fact, the company keeps a number of the trailers in Houma so that loading can begin immediately once the decision to evacuate is taken.
“We can move everything,” says Ellyson. “Spares, tools, computer systems, check-in kiosks and weighing machines, maintenance gantries – you name it, it can be gone. The more we can remove out of harm’s way, the faster we’ll be back in operation.”
It’s rare that a storm which is odds on to strike one base will also critically impact the other, so either the equipment is relocated in part from Houma to Galveston, or vice versa – the most portable assets being, of course, the aircraft themselves.
“We can adapt pretty quickly,” says Attaway. “After Katrina and Rita we were flying out of Alabama for a time and made it work, but we are far more prepared now.”
Just a few weeks after my visit to Houma, PHI’s base took a direct hit from Francine – a Category 2 hurricane. Flying did not skip a beat and Houma was fully operational seven days after the storm. The plan works.
We hope you enjoyed reading our Operator Profile: PHI feature from RotorHub International’s October/November 2024 issue. You may find these articles interesting:
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