Fair-minded aviation consumers can only welcome the ATSB analysis and publication. As I've said a number of times, the scandal has been that even the top-level comparative stats have not been openly available, having been hidden in the RA Aus mire. I made my own choice based on what data I could pull together myself, and if having this present data available leads to others more easily doing the same, that's progress.
I don't expect anyone else (incl. CASA) to make the choice on my behalf but if there's a clear outlier in terms of unreliability at a given state of the engine art, I don't have a problem with the national aviation safety body highlighting the issue and pushing for the improvement that both RA Aus and the manufacturer had previous opportunities to achieve.
Operating my Rotax-powered VLA as a VH machine, I suspect that I have still taken a (hopefully small) hit in reliability relative to traditional aero engines in the other aircraft I fly, but it's a corner of the operational space that might yield some interesting stats, assuming there are more than a handful of aircraft included in the Rotax/VH category. I'll be interested to see what the continuing ATSB analysis comes up with, not because I think there's any magic reliability cut-off but because I want the opportunity to make choices on the best data available.
Last edited by tecman; 11th Dec 2014 at 08:45.
Reason: typo