Originally Posted by
birmingham
...Abolutely, as an engineer it is impossible to argue against what you say. If it were 2009 I think this would be an entirely sensible approach.
The problem is that it is 2016 the only way we could continue as normal is to persuade the passengers that reducing the TBO would be enough to ensure their safety.
5 gear related accidents, 3 total loss fatalities worldwide in E&P since 2009, 4 of them on the same range of A/C.
Plus we have this from the AIBN...
"The nature of the catastrophic failure of the LN-OJF main rotor system indicates that the current means to detect a failure in advance are not effective."
a. Clearly we couldn't give them an absolute guarantee of no failures nor should we.
b. They won't be listening this time.
What will come out of this will be some form of industry wide initiative so that future aircraft have more reliable gearboxes.
I agree, but it depends if the outcome is
due to fatigue of use and improper overhaul/maintenance
how can you ever monitor that better?
you can only minimize the risk by decreasing TBO.
If that was new parts that leads to catastrophic failure
after less than 1 month operation time, the
issue is the qualification testing and certification at the manufacturer.
both have up until now proven insufficient as we have the bevel gear incident as well.
But even for the bevel gear incident it was introduced on all types of
Aircrafts of the type, decreased TBO, decontamination of oil
and cleaning of the part. Still CAAN approves 2 times in less than a month
extended TBO. I think that is also a main mistake.