Oh dear, sad how people get the wrong end of the stick and stories get bigger and bigger all on their own.
The cracking is NOT at the pylon to tailboom joint. There have been some instances of the upper left hand tailboom to fuselage mount cracking (in the sheet metal, not the casting). The repair scheme is quite basic and straight forward. The machines were sent to Agusta in Belgium for repair (not Italy), and why wouldn't you?? It is a free service under warranty, and they have all the tooling to do the job very quickly, while the customer can concentrate on flying their other machines.
Pan pan splash, I suggest your friend calls Agusta in Italy to ask about cracking, they know about it, and are incorporating a mod on the production line. Will take a while to get it introduced, but at least they are trying.
Didn't see any AD's come out when I was working in the UK on the 139. Service Bulletins yes, but AD's no.
Had a few unusual mechanical problems (swashplate boot for instance), but by and large it has been more reliable than the S-76's at the same base. The problem with any faults it develops is that it is often the first time anybody has seen that fault, so rectification takes longer than it would normally due to a lack of experience. Use your tech reps at Agusta, Honeywell, and Pratt. That is what they are there for, and I found them all to be extremely helpful with any queries I had.
You just about need a forum where operators of new types can share fixes to problems that they have encountered.
If only it had another 400kg of payload!!!!
