In 92-93 ,I have had to deal and fly on MI 8 AMT (or MI 17-1) built by Ulan Ude production factory...really a great helicopter perfectly adapted to tough conditions....and I don't think one of our "westerner" equivalent could have done the same job so easily. Neverheless, talking about "our"certification standarts, everything, except maybe performances is out target.
Life times are so terribly short because this helicopter has been initialy designed to comply with military standarts for a battlefield with almost no maintenance. A factory engineer told me the life times could probably be extented , but at this time no real study had been done in this matter.
Latter, I have seen civil Mi17s operating in South America, with great efficiency once again in difficult conditions
As I have already quoted in a previous post I only regreat not to have taken a type qualification and flown them after my "russian tour"