GP - I agree with you - Sikorsky knew by Heli-Expo that the aircraft was not ready for sitting on the PHi ramp and flying out to the GoM, the stuff at Heli-Expo was nothing short of a publicity stunt (aka "hoopla" in your words) to grab the headlines.
Hippolite - Call it what you like, but the aircraft was not ready for operations at the time of Heli-Expo and could not have been fully "accepted" by PHi (or they would not have agreed to it going back into the shop for more work).
The true delivery date is the one where the aircraft leaves the factory for the customer with no immediate plans on the aircraft returning to the manufacturer (ie dictionary, not
PR, definition). Given that, the corporate machine now based in the UK was the FIRST delivery as it was already in the UK on Friday last before the PHi ship got to a ramp near the GoM
There was a report in June of a problem that was "not significant" and that they would be "delivering to PHI during the summer, as projected" - the report stated
The aircraft involved suffered flight control and other damage when a hydraulics test cart was hooked up wrongly. However, seems like this (or another problem) stopped all deliveries until last week. Nick - can you enlighten us further on this? Is late September "summer" in Sikorsky's dictionary?