There is no quality control at MD. The machine with 80 defects was a joke, I have pix if anyone is interested !
One of my current customers who has a new machine ( not yet flown it, although it has been in UK for a couple of months ), well it is siting in a hangar as it cant be flown in Europe. The reason no one bothered to certify the Meeker door pins that are now fitted as standard. MD only had a year to sort this out, could they be bothered - no. Fuchs in Switzerland have the same problem with their new machine. Perhaps you could argue that it was Meekers problem, but MD are fitting the pins. Now when you look at the oil cooler assy fitted to the newmachine ( lifed items bearings and belt) we found the following.
The assy had 44.2 hours on it when fitted and had been on 7 different machines. Makes you wonder what else gets missed, to be fair MD said they had got this wrong
and sent ovcer new bits
The upshot of these 2 machines have been 3 of my customers voting with their feet and buying an EC120 a 350 and the 3rd a44 in the past 9 months.
Now dont get me wrong they are great helicopters and I had hoped that Tilton woud have put some sensible management in. Obviously not which is a shame but there we go.
Rant over I have got to go and invoice my customer for the use of one of my 500's as his new one cant be flown, suppose there is a silver lining to every cloud !!!