I think the point is that this is really not newsworthy, and is senseless journalistic sensationalism. The problem is that dramatizing these events has a very negative effect on the industry, both in terms of confidence for the passengers and also with respect to a balanced view for the customers and general public. The fact remains, that this was detected in routine maintenance, exactly as it should be. A crack in the mounting foot is, in itself, not a great problem, especially when you consider that this crack was probably barely visible to the human eye (only to a technicians eye
), and that it certainly is not a catastrophic failure that the press would like to portray. It is a helicopter, and they are grounded all the time for all sorts of reasons, and this will always be the case - fact. That is why we have highly trained maintenance departments. To me this is a very good proof to all passengers and customers that Cougar are doing a professional and very good maintenance operation and detecting all the snags as early as possible, but that does not sound so exciting as a headline in a paper (by the way - I have no connection whatsoever to Cougar). It is not about secrecy and cover-ups, but I really wonder who feeds the press this rubbish, as they should really look at what they are doing and the effect it has. The S92 is and remains to be an extremely reliable and tough machine, despite what a few journos in Canada want to have us believe, but it is just that - a machine, therein lies the weakness. When are we going to stop with this pointless scaremongering.