On the whole, this sounds exactly like the Sikorsky machine I fly at the moment...the Seahawk. Put a new transmission in and she'll make metal for a while (ie. chips). These ol girls have such big, chunky transmissions that It'd take a small nuclear detonation to destroy them. And fire lights? Obviously not to be taken LIGHTLY (thats a pun...get it?) we have them all too frequently...usually a bit of water in the cannon plug.
Ya know, it all boils down to the newsies having portable scanners and picking up the pan call (or the RTB call) and blowing it all out of proportion in order to make it SEEM LIKE news.
I tend to agree that this doesn't seem at all like a problem for the airframe overall.
HP