PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Wessex loggers grounded
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Old 30th Jun 2017, 23:40
  #20 (permalink)  
SASless
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Downeast
Age: 75
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As they found out with the BV234 on the North Sea. 1,000,000 hrs. experience with the Chinook but they hadn't flown at max cruise speed at nearly max weight for six or seven hours a day.
Yes.....we know how arduous such a profile can be as compared to 8-12 hour days with all sorts of underslung loads and heavy internal loads with high rate of descents and max power takeoffs and max power landings with a greater frequency than offshore.

What you are trying say I think is the stresses and wear issues were different than experienced by the US Army during its operation of the aircraft.

You also omitted any mention of how the very exact same aircraft have been worked hard by Columbia Helicopters doing Helicopter Logging which is far harder on the aircraft than any other work it has done.

I am sure Columbia had a very different experience than did British Operators of the Chinook.

We know the RAF certainly found some difficulty due to a go it alone attitude until some corporate knowledge was accrued.

The Helicopter-Loggers that used Bell UH-1's for Logging learned some very costly lessons about design weaknesses in those aircraft over the years....as Logging was not what the old Huey was really destined to do all day long at the weights the Loggers carried on a regular basis.

The Wessex will be the same....just as its cousin the S-58T was when it was put into Civilian Long Line Service. The Wessex did not last long in Civilian service either....and after some fatal crashes in Nigeria....Bristow retired them.
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