Wondering if they are performing a hoist load check every 5 hours or 50 lifts as per the EASA AD. How many of those hoists are due for 24 month overhaul. The only exception would be for saving lives.

bulk contract to the one manufacturer?

Probably from properly joined-up services that have effective communication and coordination with each other, whose priority is to serve the public role that keeps them employed......
Compare with the UK Police-forces that all run their own little empires (see recent ACPO debacle) Also the recent Paedo scandals , where the Police decided they would ignore the Statute law and enforce what and where they felt fit. Paedos in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.....persecution of motorists in some parts of Wales.......
The French obviously all pull together.....We are capable, but too many vanities in the ivory towers.
*ducks and runs for cover*

To wiggins61
First all of all the Gendarmerie helicopters are state owned aircraft under a military registration. They are not under the supervision of EASA but a national run agency which supervises state owned aircraft (DSAé). Nevertheless in everything they do they try to comply with any EASA rule, but they do not HAVE to.

Remember also that their crewman is also a fully licensed airframe or avionics technician, thus authorized to do the 50 winches inspection. When the 50 winches are over they can fly back to Digne (10') perform the inspection and come back straight ahead or do it in the field.

I am quite sure the Digne Air Support Unit would welcome the Sécurité Civile to perform any inspection in their hangar as well.

to Cockneysteve

Unfortunately the French don't pull really all together. The gendarmerie and Sécurité civile unfortunately compete against each other a lot although they belong to the same ministry.
Could be worse, but could be better!
I also believe Brits have an ability to reform that the French don't have so keep the faith!

Hopefully Goodrich have the tooling on site to perform the pull check. That being said the forced EASA pull check is actually damaging the hoist cables. Quite dangerous.

I'm surprised to read the co-pilot only had 630 hours. Seems very little to be able to fly that aircraft on his own in normal cases when the captain was unavailable.:confused: