Here's one for the pilots then.
You are about to land in a city street on a HEMS mission. There is a shop 20ft to the left and 20 ft to the right. At 10ft from the floor you see a sizeable piece of shop frontage break off and rise over the main rotor disc.
Would you rather;
1. Be flying in a 902 with no risk to the yaw control.
2. Be in an 145 or 355 with the risk of the shop frontage knocking out the tail rotor resulting in a massive uncontrollable yaw which even the best pilot could not control probably resulting in a nasty roll over.
The one incident of in-flight notar fod damage took out 12 of the 13 blades and in the pilots own words "there was no evidence of loss of control".!!
PANews, why do you keep stating the Annual on EHMS took 7 weeks? I was personally involved with that check and it didn't take half that time. The main reason most of the 902 operators don't trust Eurocopter can be put down to the misinformation in your monthly rag. The 902 operators know how long an Annual check takes and know that your 7 week claims are laughable. Therefore they assume all the other quotes you come out with are laughable. I only know of one maintenance organisation who claims to be able to do a 902 annual in 4 days and they have recently lost quite a few contracts due to unhappy customers who would rather the job done properly than quickly!
As to the problems with MDHi I'm with you all the way PAN. I would love nothing more than the new owners to finally sort their sh1te out so that the 902 can once again be a real competitor to EC, Bell and Agusta. Patriarch have come up with a mission statement which I will not repeat here but looks on paper to be a modest and realistic way of rebuilding the company. There is no point in them playing the damage limitation game because the damage has already been sustained. They are instead opting for an actions speaks louder than words approach which the old MD management were not very good at. There will be no overnight recovery but I believe that there will now be a recovery.
Dr A