Originally Posted by
SASless
History can be an interesting aid to the corporate memory.
The reference to technology we know as Hums and how it was thought such innovation could prove very useful in preventing accidents reminded me of seeing the trials work being done while flying on the North Sea.
Am I right to assume that technology was mature and installed on the two aircraft that shucked their rotor heads following a main gearbox failure?
Yes, but HUMS doesn't work on epicyclic planet gears, the technology to make that work doesn't, or didn't, exist. That is why epicyclic chip detectors were fitted. But HUMS was pretty good at other types of gears. Just because HUMS is not perfect and doesn't trap 100% of failures, doesn't mean it isn't a very good thing. A corollary would be that clearly pilot training doesn't work 100% effectively because there are still pilot error crashes. Therefore what is the point of having any pilot training?