Originally Posted by
aa777888
And yet those helicopters don't crash or kill people any more often than Bell helicopters.
Well that's highly debatable as the following graphic from
this article illustrates. The graphic shows that the Robinson R44 led all major models with the highest fatal accident rate per flight flight hours for the period from 2006 to 2016 based on NTSB and FAA data.
Death rate (Fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours)
Now, there could be a variety of factors other than the helicopter itself that skews the data against the Robbies. However, given that the R44 has a nearly 60 per cent worse fatality rate than the average of the next five non-Robinson helicopters it certainly looks like the helicopter itself is a factor.
For balance, there's
this article by John Zimmerman that makes a counter-argument based on fatal accidents per fleet size (as opposed to hours flown). When you look at ATSB and CASA data for Australia you see a not dissimilar outcome for fatal accidents per fleet size when comparing Robinsons with Bells; the number of fatal accidents per number of helicopters is comparable.
What is immediately apparent, however, once you dive below the headline numbers is that you do not see 'loss of control' and/or 'in-flight break-up' in the Bell column; those causes are almost uniquely attributable to Robinsons. That is surely telling.
Originally Posted by
aa777888
Got the numbers to prove it. Shared them here in the link above.
You provided two links above - one was to a page that doesn't exist and the other was to a 206 accident investigation.