Firefighting could be secondary mission for aging S-92s, says Milestone


Milestone brought a tank-equipped Sikorsky S-92 to Heli-Expo 2022. Milestone Image

Milestone’s recently-launched program to convert an offshore Sikorsky S-92 into a firefighting aircraft could be a sign of things to come as the offshore heavy fleet ages, the lessor says.

The company owns 82 S-92s, making it the owner of the biggest S-92 fleet in the world.

“The first [S-]92 was commercially delivered in 2004, so the oldest models are approaching 20 years of age,” Milestone CEO Pat Sheedy told ***Vertical***. “As we look at our fleet and how we do portfolio management, we look at the lifecycle of these helicopters as being anywhere from 25 to 35 years — but primary missions are probably the first 20 years. Twenty years in oil-and-gas is probably as long as the S-92 is going to stay there. So, we have to look what happens next for that asset.”

He added that most of Milestone’s S-92 fleet is quite young, so isn’t ready to make such a transition yet, “but we really have to start planning now.”

While exploring its options, Milestone came across Helitak, an Australian firefighting equipment manufacturer. The two companies have partnered to bring what Sheedy describes as “a unique proposition” to the aerial firefighting market.

Making its public debut at HAI Heli-Expo 2022 in Dallas, Texas, Milestone’s firefighting S-92 is outfitted with Helitak’s custom-created carbon-fiber FT5000 — a lightweight 1,050-US gallon (4,000-liter) collapsible belly-mounted fire suppression tank.

According to Helitak, the tank, weighing just 715 pounds (325 kilograms), can be installed or removed in minutes, and can be filled in 48 seconds using its hover pump. When not dropping water, the aircraft can still be used to transport up to 19 firefighters.

“It’s not a direct competitor for the Firehawk . . . it’s multi-mission,” said Sheedy. “It can do the firebombing, but it can carry passengers as well, and you can reroll it relatively quickly. The customers we’ve talked to about the aircraft in terms of firefighting, that’s really what excites them, the fact that you could fly in firefighters, load up with the water and do the water bombing, and then take firefighting crews back out.”

The equipment is still to be certified, and this is being completed in concert with a “key operator” of the S-92. Once certification is in hand, the firefighting S-92 will be marketed primarily in the U.S. and Australia. A launch customer is likely to be announced soon, with Milestone and the company working on the details of an agreement, said Sheedy.

The S-92s potential shift from offshore to utility work echoes that of the H225, which has largely exited the oil-and-gas sector following the high-profile crash of a CHC-operated H225 near Turoy, Norway, in 2016.

“If you look at the H225, that should have had a similar [offshore] lifecycle, but for reasons outside of our control, that aircraft had to make that transition [away from its primary role] a lot earlier, and that’s moved into utility,” said Sheedy.

Milestone has 30 H225s and expects the entire fleet to be in operation by the end of this year. “A handful” remain working in oil-and-gas, but the vast majority have found new roles in the utility world.

Fleet diversification

The lessor owns 330 helicopters, and, at its launch in 2010, had a clear focus on the offshore market. The oil price collapse in 2015 forced it to diversify, and the mix of oil-and-gas configured aircraft versus other types shifted from 90 percent of the former in 2015, to about 60 percent today.

In growing the presence of its fleet in non-oil-and-gas markets, Sheedy said Milestone has focused on “mission critical” services, such as search-and-rescue (SAR), emergency medical services (EMS), offshore wind, and utility (through the H225s repurposing).

Milestone’s focus in the years following the oil price collapse in 2015 was in keeping its on-lease fleet flying and boosting the utilization of the remainder of its fleet. Positive signals in the offshore sector had the company bullish at the start of 2020, but then the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

However, Sheedy said the lessor’s aircraft that were flying in January 2020 continued to fly throughout the year, and into 2021.

“I think it proved the investment theses for us that these are mission critical helicopters, these are mission critical assets, and they’re going to fly,” he said.

Now, many of the offshore projects that were delayed by Covid are being greenlit.

“We’ve often sat here through the last half-a-decade and talked about green shoots — a tentative recovery,” he said. “As we sit here today, we’re past green shoots in our minds — we’re seeing a real tangible increase in activity across all our mission profiles, across oil-and-gas, EMS, SAR, and then we’re seeing growth in ancillary missions.”

In terms of the offshore market, the availability of medium helicopters is currently “very constrained” due to high demand, said Sheedy. As an illustration, Milestone is about 11 months away from having any available AW139s, despite having a fleet of over 80 of the type.

Heavies remain in oversupply, but Sheedy said Milestone has reactivated more S-92s from long-term storage over the last six months than in the prior two years.

“A lot of this is remaining short-term demand for now,” he said, “because $130/barrel oil doesn’t translate into large-scale offshore projects overnight. But I do think it sets a positive environment for that investment. And what we’re seeing right now is a lot of demand around exploration. . . . That leads to production demand in the future, and that is your long-term demand.”

However, while there are positive signs offshore, Sheedy said the industry was still “a bit away” from an environment that would justify significant investment in new offshore helicopters.

“We still have end users — oil companies — who have ‘termination for convenience’ type clauses in their underlying contracts with our customers,” he said. “This makes it very difficult to justify an investment case for a helicopter with a 25/30-year life when the end user can terminate after 60 days and decide they don’t want it.”

  
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