IIRC correctly Cougar 491 was about 30 minutes from the nearest land...
Perhaps the Cougar crew were also mislead by the 3 other low oil pressure but no opil loss events in Norway and Brunei in thinking they would probably make it to shore OK.
But perhaps they did not read the post by helikiwi on the S-92 thread on 4 July 2008 about the one prior total oil loss.
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/163...ml#post4222516
The story as relayed to me by those involved....
Day before yesterday an S92 was onroute to Broome on a return flight from an offshore rig when a main Txmsm low oil pressure was noted, shortly afterwards remaining oil pressure ceased completely and a fairly rapid decent was carried out. From time of intial low px indication at 6000ft to touchdown was 8 minutes. The oil filter housing which apparently has 3 studs fastening it to the txmsn was hanging on by one which hadn't broken and most of the oil had been pumped out.
During the incident no overtemp indication occurred and a safe landing was carried out next to a homestead in the middle of nowhere 28 miles north of Broome.
Bristow came to the rescue with a trusty old Puma within 60 mins and the guys were taken on to Broome.
At this stage a Sikorsky rep will be onsite tomorrow with a boroscope to assess the viability of flying it the 28 miles back to Broome where the txmsn will most likely be pulled.
Also on the S-92 thread just a few days before the Cougar accident Horror box posted this:
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/163...ml#post4743808
Loss of MGB PRESSURE is your subject here, and there are a number of indications and causes, so maybe not quite as simple as loss of XMSN oil, but once the MGB pressure drops below 35psi the red warning light appears and you get an audio warning. One is to then manually operate the MGB OIL BYPASS switch within 5 secs. This then bypasses the oil from the cooling system, which consists of teflon hoses and a radiator, routing it directly back into the MGB. This system is the "known" weakness and is stated as "vulnerable to leaks" in the OM! The procedure is therefore to "hope" this is where the leak was, bypass it and descend to MSA and hope you get no further indications. Get some further indications and you can assume maybe guess 1 was incorrect so you get another go, but dont take too long about it. These would include a further drop in MGBP, a HYDS failure - as there is a hydraulic module drive gear taken off the input drive shaft - therefore indicating impending drive shaft fail, maybe an AC failure, or any loud and unusual noises or a combo of ACC and/or INPUT CHIPS. If guess one was wrong, then we can give guess 2 a go and maybe see if there is anything indicating with the ACC modules or INPUT modules. An INPUT CHIP at this stage will certainly result in bringing an engine back, but only if it is suspected that the failure is here. By this time I suspect most of us are looking to get down and hopefully onto the solid ground PDQ but a ditching is also on the cards if nothing solid is available. If all this is getting a bit confusing we can also consider the possibility that there is a problem in one of the dual vane pumps. These use one element for pressu's postere feed and one for scavenge feed. It has been suggested that if one element fails, in particular the scavenge, then the oil can be sucked out by the pressure feed! Now i am lost. Unfortunately this also cools the AC gens, so things are going from bad to worse once more. Again, looking for somewhere to land.
All in all the situation is not very good, and there is a good deal of room for confusion. There are one or two on this forum who have some much better first hand experience of this, so can maybe explain it better.
Bold text added by me.
BTW I notice CEFOSKEY's postive posts on the MGB have gone.