Perhaps maxNG would like to comment but no doubt the chances of the tragic accident off Canada would have been less if Shell was one of the operators there and Shell's industry leading standards were applied rather than the rather weak minima of Canadian laws which I'm sure JimL will confirm have none of the rigour of JAR-OPS 3 when it comes to offshore operations.
SM, IMO Cougar 491 would most likely not have happened if the S-92 had been designed to cope with failure of the titanium filter mounting bowl studs and/or had a true 30-minute MGB run-dry capability. Whether the interpretation of the applicable design standards was the root cause of this tragic failure will no doubt be an argument for the lawyers and manufacturers to debate, although if the case is as I believe possibly going to be settled out of court we will probably never know. Would Shell have made a difference to the S-92 design, I would like to hope so, but I would also hope that the helo manufacturer's design team would have looked at all possible failure modes and addressed them in the various systems and component's design. Or is this a "build what the current client is asking for and hope we can win more orders later" market? It will be interesting to see what SAC changes in the MGB design for the CH-148, no doubt all will be hush-hush and us lowly civilian PAX will never get to know the improvements...
How many other helo MGB designs are out there with titanium studs and only 3 mounting bolts on the filter housing bolts? Were there other mitigating factors that caused the failure of the S-92 stud(s) such as excessive vibration etc. that made it impossible to predict the moment of failure, or even pick up via visual inspections during filter change outs? These questions are for the experts to answer, how this gets relayed to PAX is critical if you want to win our confidence in this helo. Based on the current track record of the S-92 the information relaying leads a lot to be desired and certainly has much room for improvement.
Now we have MGB feet cracks from apparently an as-yet unknown cause and my fellow UK citizens along with my Canadian co-workers are up in arms with the whole thing. So, in hindsight it is good to be honest and transparent, but only if
all operators follow the same approach. That means that EASA and the FAA must work together better to ensure a global standard is developed and maintained.
I knew when I was in a Puma that the MGB liked eating metal (one of the many reasons why Cougar opted for the S-92), but I also knew that the operators were doing the required preventative maintenance to ensure that the helo was fit for use. That view sadly changed when the Miller flight's MGB failed and from what I've read on the incident IMHO the HUMS data was not used to ground the helo until the MGB was changed out. So who's to blame?
I believe that someone said a while back on this thread "never fly the 'A' model of anything over hostile terrain" or words to that effect. When will the S-92b come out then, and how will we know that it is a proven design?
Safe flying
Max