Visionary, I guess that my comments are questions on the point of the entire exercise. I am not questioning anything that the RAF are doing with this mission, simply the fact that it is being promoted as some kind of tremendous achievement and displays "superior" capability.
To suggest that the entire exercise is anything other than a marketing trip for the US-101 is simply disingenious. If you don't believe that, then check out the
US-101 website.
As I read the responses to this, I feel obligated to ask the next question. Is this self deployment, from beginning to end, being funded by unknowing British tax-payers, Agusta-Westland, or Team US101? I think that the response to that question might reveal more of the motivation for the exercise, than any other?
As Team US101 has never built a 101, let alone ever even owned one, how can they demonstrate the "superior" capabilities of the helicopter without getting one to demonstrate with?
I am also genuinely interested in the airworthiness status of the fleet. The fact that the RAF has one flying in the US, but the Canadian fleet is (reportedly) restricted to emergency missions only, is hardly representative of the fleet status. I am sure an official answer to this question would go a long way to answer my own questions regarding the "helicopter’s superior capabilities and reliability."
As a veteran of many of my own incredible "self-deployments", I think I have one even greater achievement. My trips were paid from beginning to end, with commercial contracts at the destination, and in many cases were not even limited to crossing the vast stretches of the North American continent, but across numerous continents in the same trip. Oh, and at the end of it all, I was expected to go to work and be hauling passengers as soon as I arrived on site.
Must run, I have two large self-deployments in progress, and need to work out the numbers for yet another one.