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Old 10th Dec 2015, 13:17
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Lonewolf_50
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Texas
Age: 64
Posts: 7,228
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That's a noteworthy operational record, and is very nice work by those who designed, built, fly and maintain these helicopters. (@Helihenri IOC was in February of 2011, FWIW).

To put into perspective how impressive that safety record is, I'll dig into my memory and present the following (any errors in recall are apologized for up front):

1. From 1982 to 1986 Navy SH-2F: 14 Class A mishaps. (Over a dozen folks were lost
2. From 1989-1993 three SH-60B (a mature aircraft at that point) class A Mishaps in the West Coast wing. All of them included people I knew personally. (Four fatalities: two TRGB failures flight over water, one uncontained engine failure led to losing the second engine, flight overwater). If there were other Class A's or losses in Seahawks during that period my memory is failing.

This may not be an apples to apples comparison, as it's a fixed wing training aircraft that flew a boat load of hours, but it covers a similar period of time ...
3. During the period from 2000 to 2013, the T-34C (a very mature aircraft at that point) had seven class A mishaps and 8 fatalities. (I think I have accounted for them all). During that period, the T-6 began to replace the T-34C and it was completely replaced by 2013. That makes it an inverse of the look that Otterotor's gives us of flying the Viper "from birth into adulthood."
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