Well I guess I had to take that pitch on....
I must admit if you asked me that question a month ago I would have put my hand up [somewhat meekly] and said yes they look like they may be getting better, but time and tide change all things and I now have done a complete u-turn in the wake of two major AD events in the space of a fortnight.
It would all appear unsustainable by the customer [who after all is the important figure in this question who is not flying, flying within a restriction, and paying for the loss of business or replacement airframe]... now we have an FAA Emergency AD that is reducing all NOTAR aircraft to 100kts while MD gets the repair kits manufactured some time next month.
I guess the US market was not too bothered when the small Explorer fleet got grounded for a week but they may just get agitated when the whole NOTAR fleet [250 airframes?] is zipped down to 100kts because of another branch in the same sorry 'No-tail' saga turning up.
NOTAR should be sorted by now, its not a young programme and yet time and again it is seen as the Achilles heel of the MD product line.... when was the last major event [as in fleet grounding] on the thousands of conventional tailed MD500E, Agusta 109 or even the EC135?
That says it all I am afraid.
