Been flying R44's commercially for 13 years, some 2.800 hours. Been quiet fun with them ... until now.
Current R44 got new main rotorblades, but after just 34 hours a lot of the yellow or black paint peeled off in big chunks especially the last hour.
Robinson contacted, they are very sorry for the poor paintjob they had done and they are willing to pay for a local painter in Denmark to repaint them.
Then they backtracked when they got the price for the repaint job, and also did not want to guarantee the paintjob if they do not do it themselves.
So now I've got a R44 AOG for additional 3 weeks (4-5 in total), if we are lucky instead of just 1-2 weeks AOG. Thanks Robinson, great service (not really) ...
If they don't want to guarantee a local repaint job for blades they have done a piss-poor job on, they should send us new blades instead of letting the customer wait several weeks for a repaint. They made the faulty blades, not their customer.
This lack of service and lack of responsibility of ones own faults really pisses me off ... if I treated my customers this way, I wouldn't have any very soon.
And we are apparently not the first case. Another Danish R44 had both its paint and primer paint peeling off back in 2017 after just some 30 hours, again Robinson did not want to guarantee a local repaint despite done through a Robinson approved maintenance facility.
Robinson: This is NOT ok especially for a commercial operator that relies on their helicopter(s) !!
