Originally Posted by
RVDT
I think gullibell's post is relevant.
It points out that there are not a lot of huge design differences in most helicopter MGB's.
These components are invariably not made by the OEM.
There are plenty of MGB failures that are not catastrophic and there are some that but for some grace easily could have that do not get into the public domain.
Something really obscure happened here.
There are a large number of factors in this accident and some that may be difficult to trace unfortunately, for various reasons, which will make any fix possibly beyond economic as it seems.
Is it really true that ' something obscure happened here'?
Au contraire, it seems obvious to me that the gearbox design has insufficient margin, based on the record.
That is a solvable problem, which AH tried to finesse after the first crash.
Can they solve it while still making a return? After the second crash, I don't think so. AH has to eat the dirt and fix the gearbox, not for the 225s sake, but to be an acceptable supplier going forward.
I recognize that AH depends on its suppliers, so that the fault is not solely that of AH, but AH blessed the final product.
Still, AH can and will surely have the suppliers eat part of the cost