Originally Posted by
birmingham
...They simply will not tolerate 5 hull losses in seven years. A line has been crossed. If you don't get that then you don't get NS HSE culture.
So is NS HSE culture based on hard science and fact, or on emotion and hysteria? If based on hard science and fact "it" will be aware that dumping a well tried and tested family of helicopters, for unknown and barely tested new models, cannot be considered a safe thing to do for with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY the new models will contain some "gotchas" just as the previous generation did (S92, EC225, AW139 etc). So do tell us, is NS HSE culture really so ignorant and stupid as to want to promote dumping the existing fleets and replacing with brand new types?
Personally I would rather continue with well used fleets whose bugs have nearly all been identified and fixed, rather than starting the process all over again with the sure knowledge that there will be near misses at best, fatal accidents more likely, as the new fleet's bugs are ironed out.
Of course what is at the bottom of this is that current certification standards are not fit for purpose. Far too bureaucratic and lacking in good engineering practice (common sense if you like) with far to many design points dismissible by playing the "extremely remote" card when there is zero evidence that such a failure will be extremely remote. And anyway, with a large fleet flying a lot of hours, it is by definition only a matter of time before "extremely remote" events happen.
Let us remember how probability works. If an event is 1 in a million it doesn't mean it will happen on the 1 millionth time. It might never happen in the lifetime of the product. Or it might happen on the first time. So the certification standards consider catastrophic failure inevitable (given enough exposure) and therefore the loss of the odd human acceptable.