These were the last S76's to be delivered at this time, as Bristow had cancelled the remaining orders after the loss in Aberdeen.
At the end of the seventies Bristows were aware that there would be a massive expansion in helicopter requirements for the North Sea. The problem was equipment. Sikorsky had already closed downed the S61 line and Bristows were taking delivery of BHOF and BHOG, the last two. The S330 Puma had, despite a few technical problems, performed reasonably well but was unpopular with its clients because of noise, cramped space, no proper luggage bay and its necessity to use offshore diversion to carry a decent payload. Also Aerospatiale were not helping with spares support and the Old Man vowed he would not buy anything from them again. To meet the need they ordered a shipload of S76As that were, in Lawrence Bristow’s own words, “going to flood the North Sea”. Jerry Hardy’s blade separation put an end to that.
As a result Bristow had to search for another supplier. They swallowed their pride and cooperated with Aerospatiale so as to produc the AS332L ‘Bristow Tiger’. The rest is history.
Phil's post reminded me of hydraulic failures. Breezing back to Aberdeen late at night there was a banging and crashing above me accompanied by a shuddering of the No2 Hydraulic gauge. Instinctively (and futilely) I lowered the undercarriage. (For 332/225 pilots, on the 76 the services etc are on the No2 RH system as opposed to the No1 LH on the Pumas). This was a waste of time as there are no hydraulic reservoir as such so all it did before the No2 went to Zero was to unlock the doors. I was now down to one hydraulic system, flying controls only (not even a VTA) with an unlocked undercarriage, lousy weather at Aberdeen but Glasgow fuel because of the weather. I passed my predicament to Aberdeen telling them that I was going to have a go at Dyce but if it failed I was going to Kinloss, a Master Diversion airfield, as I did not feel like flying across Scotland with only one hydraulic pump. This was before they had invented approach bans and I had another captain with me so we could use 200ft..
We flew the ILS and at DH my companion could not see anything so around we went and off to Kinloss. The weather was fine, as normal, so we went through the emergency lowering procedure in the hover just before we landed. The gear came down with lots of noise so then I put it down.
OC Eng was there to see this new arrival and he was not happy. When the S76 blows down its undercarriage with an air bottle all the oil in the system is exhausted to atmosphere. My 76 had sprayed a load of graffiti all over Kinloss’s brand new white concrete apron.
It was too late to do anything. Our sole passenger went to Aberdeen in a taxi to clear customs and then got the same taxi back to Inverness where he lived. Next morning our engineers found that the pump’s quill drive has failed. At that time hydraulic pumps were changed ‘On Condition’. The pump we had been flying on had 450 more hours than the one that had failed.
After that Bristow changed their pumps at regular intervals.