NRDK
Well, apart from the small but important point that I am a pilot, not management and the large point that I am large and not small and the only chips are in my belly, I generally agree with what you say!
However to be fair to Mr CEO USA we have recently invested small -no large - fortune in new aircraft and continue to do so. Previous encumbants steadfastly had their heads in the sand when it came to fleet renewal and we suffered as a result.
SAS - I have to agree with you. It takes one leader to build up a company and a great many managers to slowly dismantle it whilst ensuring their personal bonuses are not compromised.
Nick, you are not seriously going to bring out the old FAR 29 tale again.
I suppose there may be some new readers who are impressed by the rhetoric but the seasoned ones will remember that the 225 TCDS shows that there were about 3 paragraphs out the entire FAR29 that were grandfathered and they were to do with having the fuel under the floor. I seem to recall that the S92 engines have a "special condition" on the tcds because the CT7 is so old (1960s) that its original certification basis did not cater for such concepts as 30 second and 2 minute power ratings.
And (blood up now), as I have mentioned before, meeting certification rules does not in itself guarantee a good product. There are no certification rules that require the tail rotor to stay in one piece, no rules that require cabin vibration levels to be below the point where passengers get retina detachment, no rules that require adequate reliability of the windscreen heating controller, RIPS or aircon, no rules that require duplex transmission oil pumps. And even when there are rules requiring, for example, 30 minutes running time for the transmission following complete loss of oil, somehow Sikorsky manage to miss them.
HC