Another KOS and Flytest,
The simple fact is that I show 61 systems in briefings to illustrate how the new rules have begun to change the game, and old systems simply don't meet the new requirements. The competition we all face is with gravity more that it is with other aircraft manufacturers.
It would be a disservice to treat the new way of developing and qualifying the aircraft as a simple sales angle, and to say that these rules are Sikorsky's alone would also be quite wrong. Certainly 61 falls far short of the new requirements, as do many other machines. Even the 76, which I truly love, is not of the latest standard, though its record and heritage give it superb marks in the safety department. I could not use pprune as a soapbox for the pablum that some posters on other sites follow, where all of one manufacturer are golden and all of another are crap. A spade is a spade, after all.
Time marches on, and with it come our expectations of new and better products, with higher safety standards.
The interesting discussion that zalt and I are having on the other thread is right up to the minute, too. I had the same discussion with a Norwegian CAA official, (who certainly does not agree with zalt BTW) just last week about the certification of the hums and bearing monitor, as we all (operators, Sikorsky and the regulators) want to be sure that the monitoring is of a high order, is certified and is useful.
Where zalt and I disagree is if the hums is "certified" only by making its operation a part of the proof that the aircraft is safe. We at Sikorsky follow the FAA lead, where the hums is important, approved and available, and that maintenance procedures are dictated by its readings, but the safety of the aircraft is not dictated by its operation. I believe that zalt is quoting the CAA line, where hums must be available to prove the safety of the system. I know of no other national regulatroy agency that feels that way, and JAR does not, I believe. My tightrope analogy is a correct one, I think, and at Sikorsky we will follow that until our customers ask for the zalt-type approval, in which case we will simply get it. Norsk is an important customer, knowledgable, experienced. They will tell us what they want, and we will build it!