Hold on there Arcal.
YOUR company decided to disable the FIPS system. Agusta have come out with a lot of updates to the system that are being supplied to FIPS Customers.
If you want to talk about using FIPS, talk to Era, they have been very successful with FIPS in Alaska because they could be bothered to work through the issues and get the system reliability improved. Give them a call. They'll tell you exactly how they feel about FIPS now. Good and bad!
FIPS is heavy, expensive, and labour intensive. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easier way of deicing the blades.
Maintenance is not maintenance. Maintenance is a combination of parts, personnel, and experience. Most of your bases don't have stores people, they rely on mechanics to do it, when they should be out working on the aircraft. Most of your parts are kept in a central location, where there isn't even an aircraft based, instead of being at your heavy maintenance bases!
I also understand you have a dedicated Tech Rep who is onsite everyday. Most 139 operators, including all the ones that I have worked for, do not have that luxury.
I understand your frustration with the 139, but I still think most of it is internally generated, especially when I talk to other 139 operators and people within my own company. None of them seem to be having the same "issues" that you describe, or if they do, not to the same extent.
Perhaps I'm missing something. I find the 139 to be very reliable, even more so when you consider the amount of stuff that most of us choose to install on it!!
Last edited by noooby; 16th Apr 2013 at 18:22.