Will H225 return offshore?
Really? If rational is to mean based upon reason or logic then fears that have and had been expressed are entirely rational aren't they? The view you express today was similar back in 2012 and then the 2016 accident occurred. The new discoveries since 2016 seemed to come through simply looking harder. Remember a companies reputation is a combination of the technology, the people and the culture. Its a bit beyond just the tech or the other words at the time of putting big boy pants on....
The following 2 users liked this post by 212man:
H225 was always my favourite ride offshore. Smooth ride, long MGB run-dry time, good (and proven!) flotation performance. huge escape windows, good view of the instruments from the right aisle seat in the second row! (Nerd alert!)
I have been involved with helicopters for SAR, defence, underslug utility tasks, as well as offshore crew change, and have followed and documented helicopter accidents for a couple of decades. So here's what I think.
1. Helicopters are more dangerous than an A320 from GLA to TFS and always will be.
2. Hundreds of people died in CAT accidents in S-61, 332, and other of those eras.
3. The H225 and S-92, both commencing service in 2004 ushered in a new era of large rotorcraft safety. That remains the case.
4. The S-92 was on the back foot from the start due to MGB run-dry time cheating and flotation limitations and ...
5. ... Cougar 91 revealed other weaknesses.
6. Higher fatality count for the H225 is because it is a successful military helicopter and gets shot at.
7. Looking at fatal accidents only in CAT ops, they are near equal but one number pushes the H225 ahead:
8. 12 years of intensive CAT operations before the first H225 fatal accident.
9. A huge proportion of NS crew change flights carry between 9 and 16 PAX: enter the Super-Mediums.
10. We don't know what we don't know yet. Will 2014 super-medium rotorcraft ultimately be safer then 2004 large rotorcraft?
I have been involved with helicopters for SAR, defence, underslug utility tasks, as well as offshore crew change, and have followed and documented helicopter accidents for a couple of decades. So here's what I think.
1. Helicopters are more dangerous than an A320 from GLA to TFS and always will be.
2. Hundreds of people died in CAT accidents in S-61, 332, and other of those eras.
3. The H225 and S-92, both commencing service in 2004 ushered in a new era of large rotorcraft safety. That remains the case.
4. The S-92 was on the back foot from the start due to MGB run-dry time cheating and flotation limitations and ...
5. ... Cougar 91 revealed other weaknesses.
6. Higher fatality count for the H225 is because it is a successful military helicopter and gets shot at.
7. Looking at fatal accidents only in CAT ops, they are near equal but one number pushes the H225 ahead:
8. 12 years of intensive CAT operations before the first H225 fatal accident.
9. A huge proportion of NS crew change flights carry between 9 and 16 PAX: enter the Super-Mediums.
10. We don't know what we don't know yet. Will 2014 super-medium rotorcraft ultimately be safer then 2004 large rotorcraft?
The following users liked this post:
Really? If rational is to mean based upon reason or logic then fears that have and had been expressed are entirely rational aren't they? The view you express today was similar back in 2012 and then the 2016 accident occurred. The new discoveries since 2016 seemed to come through simply looking harder. Remember a companies reputation is a combination of the technology, the people and the culture. Its a bit beyond just the tech or the other words at the time of putting big boy pants on....
The following users liked this post:
Rational is to mean based on reason or logic. Fear tends not to be reasonable or logical. Your average pax can’t possibly be expected to evaluate all the many factors that would allow us to say that helicopter x is safer than helicopter y. The experts on here can’t agree, so clearly it would be ludicrous to imply that an amorphous group of people called “the pax” could come up with the right answer. The pax will instead look at which helicopter crashed most recently on their patch, what the Daily Mail and social media had to say about it, and whether they find riding in the back of it pleasing to the posterior. All of which is fair enough and human nature, but it doesn’t mean they will come up with an accurate evaluation of the relative safety of various different types of helicopter.
Ok perhaps you might say fool me once… then they reflect upon how 2012 was dealt with and then 2016 happened…
Everything you have just posted is / would be absolutely fair except they are the same comments made prior to 2016 and so now what you’re saying is - it really is fixed now. How that process occurred now but not ahead of 2016 is likely more than half of the problem.
Perhaps although slightly overlooking the fundamentals. They don’t need to evaluate the detail of helicopters merely likely assume that the model of helicopter without its rotor isn’t ideal.
Ok perhaps you might say fool me once… then they reflect upon how 2012 was dealt with and then 2016 happened…
Everything you have just posted is / would be absolutely fair except they are the same comments made prior to 2016 and so now what you’re saying is - it really is fixed now. How that process occurred now but not ahead of 2016 is likely more than half of the problem.
Ok perhaps you might say fool me once… then they reflect upon how 2012 was dealt with and then 2016 happened…
Everything you have just posted is / would be absolutely fair except they are the same comments made prior to 2016 and so now what you’re saying is - it really is fixed now. How that process occurred now but not ahead of 2016 is likely more than half of the problem.
I do a lot of gliding in the highlands of Scotland, lots of people think it is highly dangerous. I mean, flying around without an engine? Must be crazy! People refuse to go up because they are too scared.
Recently the wives of two of our gliding club members have had bad accidents, one a broken leg, the other multiple fractures and is wheelchair bound for several months pending recovery. Did they crash in a glider? Of course not, one was a mountain biking accident, the other a skiing accident. Meanwhile no-one at the club has suffered any sort of injury from gliding. So mountainbiking is wonderful. Skiing is lovely, But GLIDING??? NO WAY! Not rational!
Getting back more on topic, I think the 225 head detachment thing was pretty horrific. The pilots were just flying along minding their own business, then BANG - curtains. Not the slightest hint of pilot error. Very nasty.
Meanwhile various other pilots have come to grief due to crashing due to - in our eyes - incompetence and stupidity. Happens relatively often. We would never possibly do that kind of stupid thing, obviously. We are great, wonderful pilots!
But the thing is, those “stupid” pilots all thought they were wonderful too. And maybe they were, most of the time. This is the thing with pilot-induced accidents, it is something that only happens to other people. It could never happen to us. Meanwhile we certainly don’t want to fly a helicopter with a quickly detachable rotor head because we have no control over that, whereas we do have control over not crashing due to being incompetent - because we are wonderful pilots!
However if you look at it from the pax perspective, they don’t particularly care whether they die from a QD rotor head, or from pilot incompetence. Either way, they are dodo-like. Same applies to the cold hard statistics. One needs to look at why bad accidents happen and what can be done to prevent or reduce them. Any pilot is horrified at the thought of the QD rotor head activating its QD function unexpectedly, but we gloss over the possibility that we might be the next cause of an accident. It is all rather illogical,
A helicopter that is better at guiding the pilots away from doing something stupid, is therefore probably the safer aircraft even if it did once suffer from a catastrophic mechanical failure, because the mechanical failure is not the primary source of crashery.
I pretty much agree with HC.
The short version I think goes along the line of "Perception is reality.".....even if the perception is flawed for very valid technical reasons.
My point earlier was to point that out....and that until EC finds a way to change the perception they shall have to live with reality.
Most of us can look at the remodeled oil filter containment of the 92 and understand how the mod solves that particular problem.
Few of us can analyze the causes and fixes of the Rotor Head problem that led to the 225 becoming persona non grata on the North Sea.
It may very well be fixed and what they are saying might be the God's honest truth....but thus far their efforts to put the perception to bed has not succeeded.
These modern aircraft are less of a danger to the passengers than the humans flying them as is borne out by the statistics and results of accident investigations.
Many....many years ago the Chinook decided to shed some blades due to Incidence Bolts shearing which allowed the blades to rotate in the cuff....with predictable results.
The cause was quickly found and a fix quickly instituted and every single Chinook Blade in the US Army inventory had to be modified.
The fix was simple....it required the Incidence Bolt be installed 90 degrees opposite the original direction (if the original was oriented vertically....the new one was horizontal or vice versa)...and we were told all was good.
It was.....but the attitude most of us shared was not very trusting. We were wrong and the Engineers were right.
We do have to remember that we have many single point failures in every helicopter that can cause us to end our flying career as passengers.....yet we climb into the aircraft and go about our trade trusting in the odds being in our favor.
All of the 225's that are still flying are proving to be safe so far.....so how does EC cure the perception problem.
The short version I think goes along the line of "Perception is reality.".....even if the perception is flawed for very valid technical reasons.
My point earlier was to point that out....and that until EC finds a way to change the perception they shall have to live with reality.
Most of us can look at the remodeled oil filter containment of the 92 and understand how the mod solves that particular problem.
Few of us can analyze the causes and fixes of the Rotor Head problem that led to the 225 becoming persona non grata on the North Sea.
It may very well be fixed and what they are saying might be the God's honest truth....but thus far their efforts to put the perception to bed has not succeeded.
These modern aircraft are less of a danger to the passengers than the humans flying them as is borne out by the statistics and results of accident investigations.
Many....many years ago the Chinook decided to shed some blades due to Incidence Bolts shearing which allowed the blades to rotate in the cuff....with predictable results.
The cause was quickly found and a fix quickly instituted and every single Chinook Blade in the US Army inventory had to be modified.
The fix was simple....it required the Incidence Bolt be installed 90 degrees opposite the original direction (if the original was oriented vertically....the new one was horizontal or vice versa)...and we were told all was good.
It was.....but the attitude most of us shared was not very trusting. We were wrong and the Engineers were right.
We do have to remember that we have many single point failures in every helicopter that can cause us to end our flying career as passengers.....yet we climb into the aircraft and go about our trade trusting in the odds being in our favor.
All of the 225's that are still flying are proving to be safe so far.....so how does EC cure the perception problem.
I think Airbus needs to formally address what the AIBN final stated, that the “Puma” transmission is at its design limits. Instead, Airbus continues to point to a maintenance issue for G-REDL and a crate falling off the truck for LN-OJF.
What they fail to address is that the majority of 2nd planetary gears/bearings didn’t meet their operational time limits since the L2s started flying. So short of a new main transmission design/installation for the 225, I don’t think the masses will touch it. But then that would also require Airbus to admit they had a problem to begin with.
What they fail to address is that the majority of 2nd planetary gears/bearings didn’t meet their operational time limits since the L2s started flying. So short of a new main transmission design/installation for the 225, I don’t think the masses will touch it. But then that would also require Airbus to admit they had a problem to begin with.
From the accident report REDL. My take away is the reticence to use the aircraft may very well be the inability to show what was the initiator of the failure.
The use of "could not be determined", "likely", "possibility" do not engender confidence.
An extensive and complex investigation revealed that the failure of the MGB initiated in one of the eight second stage planet gears in the epicyclic module. The planet gear had fractured as a result of a fatigue crack, the precise origin of which could not be determined. However, analysis indicated that this is likely to have occurred in the loaded area of the planet gear bearing outer race.
A metallic particle had been discovered on the epicyclic chip detector during maintenance on 25 March 2009, some 36 flying hours prior to the accident. This was the only indication of the impending failure of the second stage planet gear. The lack of damage on the recovered areas of the bearing outer race indicated that the initiation was not entirely consistent with the understood characteristics of spalling. The possibility of a material defect in the planet gear or damage due to the presence of foreign object debris could not be discounted.
Because the root cause of this accident has not yet been identified, it has not been possible to identify a terminating airworthiness action with respect of the failure mode experienced by G-REDL.
A metallic particle had been discovered on the epicyclic chip detector during maintenance on 25 March 2009, some 36 flying hours prior to the accident. This was the only indication of the impending failure of the second stage planet gear. The lack of damage on the recovered areas of the bearing outer race indicated that the initiation was not entirely consistent with the understood characteristics of spalling. The possibility of a material defect in the planet gear or damage due to the presence of foreign object debris could not be discounted.
Because the root cause of this accident has not yet been identified, it has not been possible to identify a terminating airworthiness action with respect of the failure mode experienced by G-REDL.
The following 2 users liked this post by megan:
True. Except that REDL was not an EC225. Quite similar? - yes. Identical ? No. Cockpit epicyclic chip detector light being one difference.
The following users liked this post:
I think what I am really saying is that humans are extremely bad at quantifying risk, and have a wide range of risk tolerance according to what the activity is. For quantifying risk they will say “Oooh look, that looks really dangerous” without having any concept of what the actual accident statistics are.
I do a lot of gliding in the highlands of Scotland, lots of people think it is highly dangerous. I mean, flying around without an engine? Must be crazy! People refuse to go up because they are too scared.
Recently the wives of two of our gliding club members have had bad accidents, one a broken leg, the other multiple fractures and is wheelchair bound for several months pending recovery. Did they crash in a glider? Of course not, one was a mountain biking accident, the other a skiing accident. Meanwhile no-one at the club has suffered any sort of injury from gliding. So mountainbiking is wonderful. Skiing is lovely, But GLIDING??? NO WAY! Not rational!
Getting back more on topic, I think the 225 head detachment thing was pretty horrific. The pilots were just flying along minding their own business, then BANG - curtains. Not the slightest hint of pilot error. Very nasty.
Meanwhile various other pilots have come to grief due to crashing due to - in our eyes - incompetence and stupidity. Happens relatively often. We would never possibly do that kind of stupid thing, obviously. We are great, wonderful pilots!
But the thing is, those “stupid” pilots all thought they were wonderful too. And maybe they were, most of the time. This is the thing with pilot-induced accidents, it is something that only happens to other people. It could never happen to us. Meanwhile we certainly don’t want to fly a helicopter with a quickly detachable rotor head because we have no control over that, whereas we do have control over not crashing due to being incompetent - because we are wonderful pilots!
However if you look at it from the pax perspective, they don’t particularly care whether they die from a QD rotor head, or from pilot incompetence. Either way, they are dodo-like. Same applies to the cold hard statistics. One needs to look at why bad accidents happen and what can be done to prevent or reduce them. Any pilot is horrified at the thought of the QD rotor head activating its QD function unexpectedly, but we gloss over the possibility that we might be the next cause of an accident. It is all rather illogical,
A helicopter that is better at guiding the pilots away from doing something stupid, is therefore probably the safer aircraft even if it did once suffer from a catastrophic mechanical failure, because the mechanical failure is not the primary source of crashery.
I do a lot of gliding in the highlands of Scotland, lots of people think it is highly dangerous. I mean, flying around without an engine? Must be crazy! People refuse to go up because they are too scared.
Recently the wives of two of our gliding club members have had bad accidents, one a broken leg, the other multiple fractures and is wheelchair bound for several months pending recovery. Did they crash in a glider? Of course not, one was a mountain biking accident, the other a skiing accident. Meanwhile no-one at the club has suffered any sort of injury from gliding. So mountainbiking is wonderful. Skiing is lovely, But GLIDING??? NO WAY! Not rational!
Getting back more on topic, I think the 225 head detachment thing was pretty horrific. The pilots were just flying along minding their own business, then BANG - curtains. Not the slightest hint of pilot error. Very nasty.
Meanwhile various other pilots have come to grief due to crashing due to - in our eyes - incompetence and stupidity. Happens relatively often. We would never possibly do that kind of stupid thing, obviously. We are great, wonderful pilots!
But the thing is, those “stupid” pilots all thought they were wonderful too. And maybe they were, most of the time. This is the thing with pilot-induced accidents, it is something that only happens to other people. It could never happen to us. Meanwhile we certainly don’t want to fly a helicopter with a quickly detachable rotor head because we have no control over that, whereas we do have control over not crashing due to being incompetent - because we are wonderful pilots!
However if you look at it from the pax perspective, they don’t particularly care whether they die from a QD rotor head, or from pilot incompetence. Either way, they are dodo-like. Same applies to the cold hard statistics. One needs to look at why bad accidents happen and what can be done to prevent or reduce them. Any pilot is horrified at the thought of the QD rotor head activating its QD function unexpectedly, but we gloss over the possibility that we might be the next cause of an accident. It is all rather illogical,
A helicopter that is better at guiding the pilots away from doing something stupid, is therefore probably the safer aircraft even if it did once suffer from a catastrophic mechanical failure, because the mechanical failure is not the primary source of crashery.
Overlying the entire mood will be why it took the 2016 accident to get the manufacturer to find it’s solution which it suggested there was nothing to see before - hence how 2016 could have happened.
That majors upon trust and now the feedback loop to data and how the systems are so much better, etc and…it’s no surprise it isn’t winning. The only way it could is to throw the prior management of EC/Airbus heli under the bus and present the facts / process. Oh and remember the false EMLUB failure alarms in 2 ditching still requires mindfulness that even the best systems errr.
long MGB run-dry time
True. Except that REDL was not an EC225. Quite similar? - yes. Identical ? No. Cockpit epicyclic chip detector light being one difference.
I recall in Cockpit BIMs for rotor blades that got disconnected as they were very unreliable and dozens of false indications on various magnetic chip detectors in all sorts of helicopters.
Today we have HUMS....something pioneered by Bristow as I recall that still takes five hours for analysis that usually takes place while the aircraft in question might be out on another flight.
HUMS, in my view, is the very best warning tool if the data can be processed in a most timely fashion and can detect those very minimal changes that might....operative word....MIGHT be detectable and by discovery prevent an inflight disaster.
A Chip Detector in addition to HUMS is fine....but please do not hang your hat on a chip detector as an effective, accurate, reliable fix to a gear box problem.
We still have to recall what the issue is currently and that is the opinion of those being asked to ride in the 225 as their ride to and from work.
What would you have EC/Air Bus/ Oil Companies/ North Sea Operators do to alter those opinions? Or....is it too late to be able to do that?
HC, not trying to be rude but having a caution light that might illuminate as a major remedial improvement does not exactly fill me with the warm and fuzzies.
I recall in Cockpit BIMs for rotor blades that got disconnected as they were very unreliable and dozens of false indications on various magnetic chip detectors in all sorts of helicopters.
Today we have HUMS....something pioneered by Bristow as I recall that still takes five hours for analysis that usually takes place while the aircraft in question might be out on another flight.
HUMS, in my view, is the very best warning tool if the data can be processed in a most timely fashion and can detect those very minimal changes that might....operative word....MIGHT be detectable and by discovery prevent an inflight disaster.
A Chip Detector in addition to HUMS is fine....but please do not hang your hat on a chip detector as an effective, accurate, reliable fix to a gear box problem.
We still have to recall what the issue is currently and that is the opinion of those being asked to ride in the 225 as their ride to and from work.
What would you have EC/Air Bus/ Oil Companies/ North Sea Operators do to alter those opinions? Or....is it too late to be able to do that?
I recall in Cockpit BIMs for rotor blades that got disconnected as they were very unreliable and dozens of false indications on various magnetic chip detectors in all sorts of helicopters.
Today we have HUMS....something pioneered by Bristow as I recall that still takes five hours for analysis that usually takes place while the aircraft in question might be out on another flight.
HUMS, in my view, is the very best warning tool if the data can be processed in a most timely fashion and can detect those very minimal changes that might....operative word....MIGHT be detectable and by discovery prevent an inflight disaster.
A Chip Detector in addition to HUMS is fine....but please do not hang your hat on a chip detector as an effective, accurate, reliable fix to a gear box problem.
We still have to recall what the issue is currently and that is the opinion of those being asked to ride in the 225 as their ride to and from work.
What would you have EC/Air Bus/ Oil Companies/ North Sea Operators do to alter those opinions? Or....is it too late to be able to do that?
Probably the 225 is a lost cause from a hearts and minds point of view. I’m retired, so I don’t have to fly a flying tractor thing (aka S92). The 175 is nice to fly though.
REDL was not an EC225. Quite similar? - yes. Identical ? No
Out of 20,000 hrs 6,000 were flying Turbomeca engines in the 76 in which I had my only hand grenade engine failures, two off, one of them caused a severe bout of PTSD, ask me what I think of Turbomeca engines.
.An individuals perception is their reality, is the glass half full or half empty?
Oh and I meant to say, not sure where you get 5 hours from? A few minutes with a modern HUMS (computers are fast these days!). In Bristow we had a policy of requiring a clean post flight HUMS report before a subsequent departure from base. Even if it was a rotors running turn-round in Aberdeen (which takes about 40 mins). When I retired in 2013 I don’t think all other operators did this and it was not required by the legislation or oil company rules. Which was a bit silly!
Well that might be connected with the H225 number with the back-up lube system being 52 minutes and the S-92 number before alleviations being 11 minutes. And yes, there is a like-for-like issue contained within that sentence but whichever way it's spun, Airbus owned the issue and created a system that exceeded the requirement whereas Sikorsky's approach remains controversial.
Trust in Airbus
I think one thing that may be forgotten is this;
On Tues/ Weds 26/27th April 2016 I was chatting to the 225 accident captain about technical things at the CAE Sim Centre in Oslo. On the Friday 29th April, we got the shocking news of the accident followed by learning the names of the crew [who we knew]. There was much discussion of what could cause the main rotor to detach and 'fly' to the ground. We all agreed that it would take a while to ascertain what had happened [ 225s were soon grounded by the Norwegian and Brit CAAs]
.
However, on the following Monday morning Airbus released a statement effectively stating that the there was no fault with the 225 and hinting that there may have been a maintenance problem involved in the cause. On that basis they were happy for continued operations with no requirement to consider a temporary grounding [ this had echoes of their responses to the 2 EM lube ditchings years earlier........no one was injured because of luck in those incidents]. I was astonished [but not entirely surprised] as there was no way they could have known at this point what caused the accident.
I printed off the Airbus statement and showed it to some CHC crews at CAE Oslo as I thought Airbus were being very irresponsible and I wanted their opinions. They all agreed with me.
So......one of the underlying reasons for the 225 not being in the North Sea since, was that element of distrust of not just the aircraft, but also the Airbus organisation..
On Tues/ Weds 26/27th April 2016 I was chatting to the 225 accident captain about technical things at the CAE Sim Centre in Oslo. On the Friday 29th April, we got the shocking news of the accident followed by learning the names of the crew [who we knew]. There was much discussion of what could cause the main rotor to detach and 'fly' to the ground. We all agreed that it would take a while to ascertain what had happened [ 225s were soon grounded by the Norwegian and Brit CAAs]
.
However, on the following Monday morning Airbus released a statement effectively stating that the there was no fault with the 225 and hinting that there may have been a maintenance problem involved in the cause. On that basis they were happy for continued operations with no requirement to consider a temporary grounding [ this had echoes of their responses to the 2 EM lube ditchings years earlier........no one was injured because of luck in those incidents]. I was astonished [but not entirely surprised] as there was no way they could have known at this point what caused the accident.
I printed off the Airbus statement and showed it to some CHC crews at CAE Oslo as I thought Airbus were being very irresponsible and I wanted their opinions. They all agreed with me.
So......one of the underlying reasons for the 225 not being in the North Sea since, was that element of distrust of not just the aircraft, but also the Airbus organisation..
The following 5 users liked this post by Cinderella12:
The 92 is not so cramped when things are going well. When things are going very badly, there are smaller escape windows and a perhaps confusing arrangement of more adequate escape orifices.