...covered a devastating tale of organisations that had lost their way on airworthiness. It describe a PowerPoint culture that glossed over hard questions and detailed evidence, and sacrificed safety due to incompetence, sloppiness, complacency and cynicism. The resulting catastrophe was caused as much by organisational culture as a faulty component.
and
What would be the financial impact to both SAC and Shell's operation if the S 92 were to be grounded? That and the possibility that some FAA employees might have serious questions asked of them may be reasons why, when it is crystal clear to many that the MRGB [sic] was nowhere near as robust as SAC claimed, there has been no such action.
These comments are pretty accurate statements and this is an accurate analysis.
FAA and SAC are smoke-screening Joe public in the hope that it will "all go away". I don't think so. Cougar suing SAC and the TSB report still to be published will hopefully make sure of that.
Clearly the Cougar accident may have not been fatal if the the crew had ditched earlier and that may have been influenced by the Sikorsky Safety Advisory published to placate Shell on the churning issue, that came out after Broome but before St Johns. It is only a surprise that Shell Aircraft were not named in the court case too for their interference, after all Shell have deep-pockets.
SM changing the studs (they are not bolts) does not really fix the flawed design and the reason they were not fitted before the Cougar accident is that they were not delivered to overseas operators at that time.