Originally Posted by
Fareastdriver
The only 332 gearbox failure I know about was the logging aircraft that had a barbeque plate fracture. This was because they were not recording the flight cycles correctly.
Hi,
No I was referring to LN-OPG in 1997 when NS workers started falling out of love with the Puma. That's why I was careful to point out the blade separation had a different cause (fatique in an engine drive spline). But blade separation with catastrophic consequebces. The HUMS debate came to the fore and the precautionary water landings of a couple of aircraft (false alarms on emergency lubrication systems) and a couple of entirely unrelated Puma incidents got the type something of an unfortunate reputation in E&P - largely underserved as taken accross the world and including all Puma sub types its record is pretty good. But in the NS with the history of the past 20 years and the fact that despite the best efforts of the investigators we still don't have a definitive root cause of the MGB failure in Turøy it is hard to rehabilitate its reputation. Hence CHC stick with the earlier type. As anyone familiar with
PR knows the complete absence of the word Puma is unlikely to have been an oversight.