Better Management Tools
Nick Lappos says “You ARE damaging your helicopter by observing the limits.”
Let us not forget that the helicopter is being damaged even if we are leaving it in the hangar. How many operators take ‘short term storage’ maintenance procedures seriously? And of course we all know of calendar life limits!
Management of the rate of damage is surely the issue.
In the world of ‘aerial work’, as against the world of ‘public transport’, another dimension to the problem is the customer’s perception of value for money. This, in most cases, is seen as “The most kilos hauled between two places in the shortest possible time, and no late arrivals on the job due to ‘maintenance issues’.” The industry even encourages this view, and we all know that if our company goes out of business due to ‘cut throat’ business practices there will always be another outfit that will come over the hill to replace us at even cheaper rates.
Managing the rate of flow of the ‘beans’ is commercially important and a great challenge. Maybe Eurocopter with automatic cycle counting in their current generation helicopters, un-popular in many circles though it is, has given us a good management tool. However the majority of helicopters being operated in these environs are not so blessed. What I think we need is the best possible guidance from the manufacturers on how to manage the flow of ‘beans’ and I don’t see much evidence of this guidance being forthcoming.