All this talk about how safe the S-92 is gets lost on me. Yeah, I get it, it's new. And it's got some new and interesting features. But what about the design makes it
safer than anything else out there, as "Shell Management" declares?
It's got the latest and greatest avionics!
Yes, but big deal. Avionics can be retrofitted to any airframe.
It's got emergency floats in the sponsons!
Yes, but in a heavy crash landing on water the sponsons can (and did) rip off, rendering those floats worthless.
Energy-absorbing crew and passenger seats.
See, to me, this is nebulous. It assumes a particular type of crash will occur, and offers protection *only* in those particular crashes. So as long as the aircraft hits the ground level, we're good. Impact in *any* other attitude and your wonderful energy-absorbing seats aren't worth much. Not to mention that energy-absorbing crew/pax seats are not exclusive to the S-92.
Better bird-strike protection.
Okay, I'll buy that! But...wait...didn't the S-76 already have that until operators started replacing the glass windscreens with plastic? Damn.
Larger (and more) emergency exits.
I wonder about this. How many helicopter accidents have EVER occured in which the pax were required to leave via the emergency exits? I mean, more and bigger emergency exits is a good thing, but has there been a real need for this up to now? Or is it a canard? At the end of the day I'd agree that having more emergency exits probably makes the S-92 "safer" to some degree. How much it's worth...ahhh, I dunno.
Composite main rotor blades with lightning protection.
Aren't the new Carson S-61 blades composite? Doesn't the Puma have composite rotor blades?
Redundant hydraulics and fatigue-tolerant flight controls??
Umm, dont ALL big helicopters have "redundant hydraulics?" And just how many flight control failures due to fatigue have there been in the S-61/Puma/BV107/CH47 class?
Rotor blade anti-icing system (RIPS).
Here we have a genuine technical advancement: anti-icing for the MRBs. But...let me ask, has icing been a problem in the past? Have we lost any aircraft in the North Sea or North Atlantic due to MRB icing? Secondly, I'm not sure I'm in love with the idea of dispatching into "known ice" IN A HELICOPTER. I guess we'd have to get "Shell Management" to weigh-in on whether his company would approve launching when "known ice" exists. So while RIPS *is* a real technical advancement, I'm not so sure that it makes the helicopter
absolutely "safer." I think that's arguable. (Okay, I know icing can occur even when it's not forecast. Has this been a problem in the past?)
Hey, here's something SAC can add to the S-92 that will absolutely-positively make it a safer helicopter: A transmission oil quantity gauge. For such a critical component as your one-and-only transmission, I'm surprised EVERY helicopter doesn't have one. In fact, I'm astonished that SAC left it off, if their real goal was to produce the safest helicopter ever designed. (Then again, I'm surprised by how many helicopters don't even have transmission oil
pressure gauges!)
Okay, it seems to me that the S-92 does not bring all that much that's really new to the industry that makes it demonstrably or measurably "safer" than anything else out there. But like I said, it's just new, is all, and people like "new." But let's face it, the S-92 is a single-rotor (single-transmission) helicopter with all of the limitations and weaknesses inherent in the design. I'm sure it's a fun helicopter to fly, what with all the bells and whistles for pilots to play with. Because we pilots do love bells and whistles. We like flying new stuff, not old crap, no matter how reliable or "field-tested" the old crap is.
Sadly, as we've seen in reality, the S-92 is not proving to be all that much safer than anything else. Maybe less safe compared to helicopters that actually *do* have emergency lubrication systems (not that cockamamie emergency bypass system). But hey, it is fancy and new!
Now, about 29.927(c)(1): Up a bunch of posts (or back a few pages at this point), Hilife states:
all transmissions have seals and oil filter bowls/access covers and no OEM would be able to offer a 100% guarantee that oil could not leak out of their transmissions under any circumstances......EVER!
Thank you, Hilife, you kind of reinforce my point. In their infinite wisdom, the FAA actually has a statistical definition of "extremely remote." And there are simply too many potential failure points on EVERY helicopter transmission for a manufacturer to say that a leak...*any* leak...is "extremely remote." So clearly the S-92 transmission does not - and more importantly, did not at the time of certification - meet the requirements of 29.927(c)(1). Oh, did I mention IN MY HUMBLE OPINION? Obviously, a jury might feel otherwise.
How this aircraft still has Category A certification under this part is a friggin' mystery to me. It says that money talks. SAC (mostly likely backed up by the oil companies and operators) have probably convinced the FAA that revoking the Type Certificate would be economically "devastating." That's the term they always use, right? It also says that Shell has a severe double-standard when it comes to safety...which those of us who've flown for Shell have known for years.
The reality is that when you operate for-hire a helicopter over inhospitable terrain, then the transmission becomes THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT piece of your safety pie. Not too much else matters. And in this regard, the S-92 is absolutely no safer than anything else on the market.
Imagine, if you will, that the Cougar boys had been on their way back in, cruising at 10,000 feet when they noticed their transmission oil pressure decreasing. They're still in the same mindset of not really wanting to land on the ocean, so they communicate with base to make sure SAR is on the way, and they want to give the guys in the back time to make sure they're prepared for a ditching. They initiate a 500-700fpm rate of descent to land on the water. The descent will put them landing between 14 and 20 minutes - a long time, they think maybe too long.
Six minutes in, they get anxious and start to really want to get on the deck because that gauge really, really, really is on zero psi, dammit ("How can that be??"). But they're only down to, like, 5,500 feet. So they increase their rate of descent to 1500 fpm - almost autorotative. Now they only have 3.6 minutes to go. "Should be enough," they think. But they still have to do the landing (break the RoD, slow down, set up for the ditching, flare and set her down), which will eat up more precious seconds. Total time from the top of the descent to the water, ten minutes, maybe a little more.
In all likelihood, they still would not have made it.
Playing devil's advocate another way, let's say they really did have the mythical "30-minute run-dry capability." The crew decides to use minimum power...something that gives them around 70 knots. When Cougar 91's transmission pressure went to zero, they were still 42 miles from land. At 70 knots, it would have taken them 36 minutes to reach Cape Spear (depending on wind, of course).
In all likelihood, they still would not have made it.
Those Cougar pilots were between a big rock and a really hard place. How many of us can say with
absolute certainty that we would have done any differently?