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Old 28th Apr 2014, 00:58
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GreenKnight121
 
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Your numbers cover 415 Lynx of all types built, over 42 years service from both land and sea.



One example is the Netherlands - they operated 24 Lynx from 1976-2012, for more than 160,000 combined flight hours. 4 of their Lynx were destroyed.

Two were lost at sea on night missions in 1982 (and thus likely controlled flight into the water, not mechanical failure).

The other two were written off with no fatalities - one in 1998 from an engine fire and one on 10 March 2011 in combat in Lybia - this was not destroyed, but was returned to the Netherlands in August 2012 and scrapped.



If you actually look at comparable military helicopters over the same period (if that's not too much work), you will find that the Lynx does indeed have at least an average, if not better than average, safety record when compared to any other generally similar design.


This is not to say that there couldn't be improvements - the Lynx has a ~33 per million flight hours incident of tail rotor failure (about half of which were caused by the rotor hitting an object, not by mechanical failure) - compared to ~24 for the Puma, ~23 for the Sea King, and ~20 for the AH-1 Cobra and SH-2 SeaSprite.

Data from http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAPAP2003_01.PDF

Last edited by GreenKnight121; 28th Apr 2014 at 01:10.
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