Fuel planning for EMS and SAR would be closer to 1000 lbs/hr due to the lower altitudes / shorter trips, I would expect.
Aircraft is a very nice aircraft to fly when actually able to fly. Lots of downtime recently due to maintenance. Very poor support from Agusta (at least in the US).
Common problems –
Air conditioning.
Hyd servo CAS messages due to moisture and faulty switches.
Fuel probe CAS messages (mostly due to cannon plugs).
Fire warnings due to exhausts cracking and in some cases collapsing.
AHRS failing.
GPS antenna failures (not a whole lot of fun when 150 miles offshore as the FMS D/R mode isn’t so hot)
Did I mention air conditioning.
Not so common problems –
Gear dropping magically by itself.
Engine starting to spool up when hyd electrical pump turned on ???
Parking brake sticking.
And more recently an un-commanded shutdown of an engine followed by a EEC failure.
So lots of problems, but lots of good things going for it as well (power, speed, comfort, avionics). I know Agusta are capable of building a decent helicopter but this one still needs a lot of work. However, this is new technology (at least in the helicopter world) and this is an A model. I think the B model will be fantastic and its certainly a step in the right direction.
Hope this helps.
Last edited by platinumpure; 22nd Oct 2006 at 03:30.