Hi SAS
My sympathy for the maintenance guys was aimed at those working for Bond, not for EC.
Regarding your defensiveness of the 92 there are a couple of differences between it and the L2 - the first being that unlike the 92 they were not marketed as being the safest heli on the planet (ie expectations of the 92 were high) and that gearbox has been flying a lot longer than the 92's one with only 1 failure so far. That failure probably wouldn't have happened if the manufacturer's procedure had been applied as intended.
In its relatively short career, the 92 has killed a few and scared a whole lot more with a number of "near misses" whilst the similar number of 225s in service haven't much scared anyone (yet!).
On the subject of detecting transmission failures, HUMS and debris monitoring are complimentary techniques each with their areas of effectiveness. Because the planet gears are passing around the sun gear as well as rotating, the energy of their vibration signature, even after signal averaging, seems to be too weak for current technology.
I do feel that HUMS technology has stagnated a bit, even though AAD is a great advance it is only applied to the existing HUMS analysis and that has not really advanced since its inception as far as I can tell. The long standing flaws in the software mentioned in the report are an indication that there is insufficient investment in the technology (in terms of both time and money) which is unfortunately so typical of that sort of thing these days - once the push to get new stuff in place dies down a bit, compliance with such "good ideas" is checked by people who don't really understand the sharp end of it and just want to tick the box to keep the client/Authority happy. The full value and potential is never realised.
HUMS will never be perfect, nor will debris monitoring (and SOAP only works for microscopic-sized debris, not chips) and neither will transmission. Of course transmissions don't have to be perfect, the certification rules don't require zero failure rate, just one low enough so that those designing and certifying it will have likely retired before the first failure occurs!