124 | theceomagazine.com
General Muhammad says the company’s
proud safety record is its leading selling point.
“We meet the clients’ needs by delivering a
safe and sustainable operation,” he explains.
“Our safety record speaks for itself. We have
had no accidents ever since we started
operation. A huge portion of my budget goes
into the safety management systems and the
training we do to enhance safety.
We continuously raise the
bar. We don’t accept
minimum standards;
we accept standards
probably higher
or similar to our
competitors.”
Weststar
Aviation
helicopters are
equipped with
a whole raft of
additional safety
features, including
flight data
monitoring, traffic
collision avoidance systems,
automatic deployable ELT with
navigation interface and GPS, and
SKYTRAC, a satellite-based tracking and
communication system. Additionally, the
AW139 and AW189 models in Weststar
Aviation’s fleet are capable of Class 1
performance both offshore and onshore. This
means that in the event of a single engine
failure, they have the capacity to either land
on a rejected take-off area or to continue
with the flight to an appropriate landing area.
With this extensive range of safety
features in place, Weststar Aviation has won
10 leading safety awards, beginning with
the Silver Award from Safety Award for
Excellence (SAFE) in 2009. The next year, it
collected the Gold Award and the following
year a Platinum Award. “Oil and gascompanies have the highest safety standards,”
the company’s chairman, Tan Sri Syed
Azman, has said. “We are proud to be able
to fully satisfy their stringent requirements.”
General Muhammad says safety
considerations dictate that Weststar Aviation
sometimes turns down opportunities.
“There is always commercial pressure to
bring business in, but it is a challenge if the
organisation is not up to par on safety issues.
We don’t take shortcuts. If at any point we
see something is not safe to do, we won’t
do it. There have been a few lost
opportunities because we felt
it was dangerous to operate
in certain areas.”
Weststar is
also involved in
HeliOffshore,
a collaboration,
among others,
with helicopter
operators, OGPs,
OEMs and regulators
to promote aviation
safety. “The whole
idea of HeliOffshore
is to collaborate with all
the operators, the OEMs, the
regulatory bodies, and also with oil
and gas companies. We look at what best
practice should be adopted to maintain
a safe operation. The idea of setting up
HeliOffshore is purely to collaborate and talk
business; all we talk about is aviation safety.”
With oil prices stagnating, General
Muhammad says it has become increasingly
important for Weststar Aviation to coordinate
with its customers. “Our customers are now
looking at creating a more cost-efficient
operation and we engage with them in
discussing how we can develop more efficient
methods. We engage with them monthly.
We have ideas on what needs to be done,
and hopefully we can mesh this together
with the customers’ ideas and come up
with more cost-efficient options.” »“There is always
commercial pressure
to bring business in,
but ... we don’t
take shortcuts.”
INVEST | Interview