Rogerson Kratos Huge Repair Cost – Again!
Readers of this site will no doubt remember my posting of 2007 in relation to having a repair done on my Rogerson Kratos Attitude Indicator from my Agusta A109E helicopter - the display part number is 160E015-3.
Well, I have now had another fault in my unit and I was told by Rogerson Kratos that the repair cost could be anything from USD26,700 (AUD 34,300) to USD53,400 (AUD68,600).
Initially they insisted we pay USD3,500 (AUD4,500) up front for the evaluation charge. They have now come back and quoted me USD44,500 (AUD57,000) for the repair - and they have pointed out that the warranty will only be twelve months!
I have four of these displays in the helicopter and the helicopter is now over ten years old but has only done 850 hours. If the other three displays develop problems in the next twelve months, I could be up for over USD120,000 (AUD154,000) in repairs!
These stupendous costs are totally beyond my comprehension. How could it cost such a large amount of money to repair such a small device? If I had the Garmin IFR-approved 600 display, the quoted overhaul cost is USD1,200 (AUD1,540). How can the Rogerson Kratos price be up to 37 times more than Garmin? Even the large Garmin 1000 has a repair cost of around just USD1,500 (AUD1,900).
Can anyone advise if there is any alternative to having this unit repaired at a reasonable price? Or does anyone know if there is a supplier of second-hand units?
Another alternative will be to change my Agusta to Garmin displays – it would almost be economic to do this now. Does anyone know if there is a service bulletin for doing this?
In closing, surely U.S. law does not allow Rogerson Kratos to have a monopoly on this servicing where they will not give service information to anyone else and then charge incredibly high prices?
I look forward to any helpful advice.