Nick, you said
"However, Compliance with the law is not subject to our opinion. The governments that we have pick experts, these experts tell the manufacturers what to do to make a new helicopter. Only they determine compliance."
So you don't have "politics" in the USA? There is no tendancy for US citizens to grant favour to good old US products? So some of these experts wouldn't just happened to have worked for the manufacturers before getting their government jobs (how else do you become an expert?)
Seriously, I don't think the US is any worse than any European country, but to think that these things are black and white is
naive.
So you're still not going to confirm or deny that the 92 will not run for 30 mins without some oil in the gearbox?
No, I thought not, better to stick to your "attack is the best form of defense" smokescreen and use lots of bold type!
By the way, were we talking about the L2?
For the record, the S92 has 1 level of "backup" function to cope with gearbox oil loss - the pilot activates a valve that cuts off external oil feeds and we hope that the leak was not from the gearbox itself. The 225 has 2 levels of backup - 1) an intrinsic shutoff of external oil feeds when gearbox oil level gets low (no, there are no valves to have failure modes) and 2), should we be unlucky enough to lose all gearbox oil from a leak to the box itself, a manual activation of a total loss cooling system that runs for 30 mins plus.
As I said before, I don't think this is a particularly big deal for the S92 - I'm sure it will have a long and safe operating life. But justifying that the 92 is better in all respects just because it complies with some beaurocratic rules is dangerous ground! And don't snipe at the enemy on their big day - looks like sour grapes