Originally Posted by
MajorLemond
The design has serious flaws, and needs to be redesigned from the ground up.
They can fly massive Mi26’s around without their gearboxes having catastrophic failures and I would imagine the maintanence standards of those aircraft being somewhat diminished compared to western types.
With the budget and resources of Airbus, this should be something easily rectified with an appropriate amount of development and money.
What happens when the next one loses it’s rotors?
Yes but look at it from AH point of view..
1. Despite some green shoots the E&P market for heavies is down and recovering only very slowly. Most think its halcyon days are gone. The accidents have left the /2 and 225 with a damaged reputation. Only 20 something have yet returned to E&P.
2. It is not economic to embark on a complete redesign at this stage in the product lifecycle. This is compounded by the inability to track down a definitive cause of the current problem.
3. The 225 is selling well in the military/quasi military arena with 54 orders last year and production being scaled-up to meet demand
4. The successor project has been suspended as AH don't think the technology or demand for it is sufficient yet
So it is easier and cheaper for them to play second place in E&P and try and prevent further accidents with the measures they have introduced. They seem to believe they can sleep easily with that and they have much better knowledge of the problem than I. i hope for everyone's sake they are right.
Hopefully the AIBN will find a definitive cause but at the moment their silence is deafening.