What is the 250k hours stat from? Its certainly not total hours from a fleet leader. In fact the gearbox that failed in October and May were very low hours.
In May the engineering analysis of G-REDW show that the broken components triggered the chip detectors in the sump I believe - which means bits of metal frag was in the oil.. That isn't good but for the fact the pumps aren't working so it goes nowhere unless of course you can suggest fragments travelled before the pumps fail totally (after all they got to the chip detectors).
Beyond that in the case of G-CHCN the HUMS data shows that the Red alarm threshold had been exceeded. So regardless of one pilot suggesting the vibration is insignificant it's significant enough to produce a red alarm.
The 30 min emergency lube is of course a safety net - but not in all circumstances. Given EC225 MGB issues since 2009 you would be almost crazy to continue flying for 30 mins knowing you had a MGB issue when you could have quickly ditched in flat sea alongside a ship. When bits of gearbox fire themselves out of the casing or you loose the main rotor parts being lubricated is irrelevant.
It is also wrong to say it's flown for millions of hours on the same design until 18 months ago. Were that the case you would find the fix to be simple.
This is a big mess - it's been poorly handled with very few on the same page. The worse situation is that there is conflicts between what best practice is and as we speak even EASA and the CAA can't agree how to deal with the EC225.
Seems EC have 'boxes on rigs and a helicopter about to start testing.
Last edited by Pittsextra; 17th Nov 2012 at 08:28.