Eurocopter v Sikorsky
By God, the knives are out, aren't they. Whatever way you look at it the market for medium sized offshore support helicopters is small compared to other, especially military, markets. Helicopters that shoot and rocket people are the moneyspinners so the offshore industry is going to get what is left. CEO's cannot finance research and inovation for the offshore industry. Generals can for their industry.
We are arguing about the 225 ex SA330, circa 1965, and the 92, ex Blackhawk, not many years down the road. On a longetivity basis comparing the 330 with the 225 Hiroshima would have been flattened by a continuously modified Wright Flyer.
I have had a Puma of some sort strapped to my backside for more years than I can remember. I have also had S76s strapped to my backside for more years than I'd like to remember.
The biggest snag with any civil Puma, and always has been, is the cabin. That is because the original specification, French Army early sixties, required the fuselage to fit into a Transall or a Wagon Lit truck. That is why it is so narrow and low as are French Army amoured vehicles.
Soldiers don't care when they climb into a dark and miserable environment, they're not going to be in it very long but nobody is going to pay for a more spacious cabin for offshore workers to spend a couple of hours in. If my archived brain cells are correct the original 330 prototypes, with Huey noses, had such severe vibration problems that they were cutting metal for a five bladed head and then some burke invented the barbeque plate. So it was blessed with a 4R right up to the 225. 6,000kgs was the original MAUW,it is now pulling 50% more throught he same rotor disc. However, with over 12,000 hrs on them I can honestly say that I have never had a moment of concern with the aircraft. Though the aircraft have had lots a moments with me!
The S92 is a similar ball game but they have sorted out the cabin. It will almost certainly have stacks of problems that nobody has thought of because all the people who remember the teething troubles of the Blackhawk and S76 have either retired or died off. When I flew the new kid on the block all those years ago we were writing the S76 emergancy checklist as we went along. All sorts of things used to happen. Undercarriages doing their own thing, random in-flight overspeed checks. Tragically some of them were fatal. We had steel plates to catch errant turbine blades, the MRH bearings were retained by tie-wraps. Once when I lost an on-condition hydraulic pump I found after I landed that the other pump I had been relying on for two hours had 600 hrs more on it than the one that had failed. This was supposed to have been the most rigourously tested civil helicopter in the world. One thing you could not knock it for. It did fly to the glossy brochure. the speeds, fuel consumption etc and when you went to the graphs and discovered that the offshore performance was pathetic, it flew to that too.
Some like a Ford, some like a Vauxhall. They are both new wine in old bottles thought the bottles have changed shape a bit. Myself, I would go for the one with the biggest grunt.