Max
The FAA
certified the Sikorsky design. The FAA usually witness major tests.
JAA and TC were separately
validating the FAA certification. They could both only talk to the FAA (and Sikorsky through the FAA).
I can only guess that the H-60 Blackhawk experience was offered up via FAA to justify their certification. Actually I do believe good-prior experience can be used to justify a design. However it has to be relavent (the fatal BV234 accident off the Shetlands in 1984 is a case of an aircraft changing operating environment and suffering) and bad-prior experience on other types needs to be considered too!
What is odd is that Sikorsky's experience with Titanium studs is not from the H-60, but the H-53 according to the TSB (note the E model, which suggests the material may have been dropped on subsequent H-53s) and in an installation with a robust cluster of 6 studs, not just the 3 Sikorsky introduced for the S-92:
Sikorsky selected the titanium alloy stud because these had been used successfully on other Sikorsky products, such as the CH-53E Sea Stallion which utilizes six titanium studs to attach the oil filter bowl to the MGB.
The first opportunity to question the Blackhawk heritage was not Broome, but the Norsk incident in May 2005. I say that because the vespel splines that failed were said to be an H-60 feature that had never been a problem on the H-60. Certainly it was questioned here:
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/163...perations.html