What is the status of the RAF's new (ish) Puma 2?

Tigerfish

Puma 2
 

😂 New !... 50 yr old sa330 variant.

MoodyMan, I'm afraid that information isn't in the public forum outside OPEC countries for obvious reason, oil and gas companies don't like to publish the costs of commissioning new oil fields. My data comes from a very senior oil company executive who told me the extraordinary cost are incurred in this part of the world, mostly down to the distances involved, very high labour costs and remoteness of the fields as well as lack of infrastructure in the new fields being developed.

The UK is one of the highest production cost areas in the world, and when you talk about cost per bbl, obviously mature fields with low production, this rate increases. There are huge differences in costs, field by field.

This page does not include UK, but shows breakeven price which includes oil producer government spending which is highly reliant on oil, UK is not.

This page gives cost of producing and production per day.

I think there is a lot of truth in both what SLF3 says and Mitchaa, and this is really not the place to be debating this, but in my opinion to have a successful and continuing North Sea everyone needs to work together to make it sustainable for as long as possible to protect jobs.

I have been working offshore since early eighties, but my last chopper flight was over 2 years ago, and I flew mainly in the Puma family from Mk1 to EC225, and my son now flies in the 225 (which is a huge worry for me). However, the pilots on here are spending much more time in them than the workforce (and therefore more at risk).

There have been huge safety improvements on the platforms in my time, and a lot of effort now goes on asset integrity, and detection and shutdown systems, safety case, MAH prevention etc, but in recent years we have been losing people in helicopter accidents, at an alarming rate. Even the ditchings, we got lucky with the weather conditions. I don't think it's only North Sea where we have been losing people in helicopters.

Since Friday my thoughts have been with the families of those lost, and for the lost, I can only remember that joyous feeling when you see land in the inbound flight and are so looking forward to seeing the family again. I hoped their end would be sudden, but sadly it seems they maybe had an awful last 10 seconds.

With the grounding, please lets hope we have spare capacity on other types, and we don't stretch the other types and those that fly them to the limit also.

CHC sending 139's to ABZ to cover shortfall. Rumour has it anyway. Wonder if they'll be asking any of the recently made redundant workforce to help.

BTC8183 Agreed that the original airframe is very old, - but I'm sure you know that in recent years they were all reworked using much more recent engines and transmissions etc etc. So to all intents & purposes they are much more akin to the EC225. They are now a totally different aircraft from the old SA330.
Accumulation of flight hours will be much less than the commercial variants, but the type of manoeuvres will create more strain I suspect.
I am interested because a member of my family flies in one regularly.
Tigerfish

Puma HC2.
 

The RAF HC2 puma has no commonality with EC225LP in terms of dynamic components.

Thanks, - That is what I wanted to hear!
TF

Well, I can clearly see a bolt and a safety pin in the very same picture..

I’m glad it’s not just me that can see the hardware.

So I will ask for speculation again. If Airbus seems so certain that this was not a manufactures fault, then as most seem to agree here, it must be a maintenance issue, what error on the part of maintenance would cause such a sudden catastrophic failure?

We assume since there was no PAN or Mayday call that this took the crew completely by surprise. So no loss of oil, no chips, no vibrations or strange sounds. I can't imagine what single error ( missing bolt, nut, TQ value ,etc) could account for this, especially since this was not a new MGB replacement, so something done during regular running maintenance.

I am told that part of decision to lift the operational halt is because inspections have shown there is no connection to the bevel gear vertical shaft issues.

What maintenance action could have....
 

A fill-up with the wrong oil/lubricant?

Well that seems premature then as that issue caused the oil pumps not to be driven, not the rotor head departing. And again, any oil/lube issue would be preceded by numerous cockpit indications I would think.

Since when has the CAA (UK & Norway) lifted the ban on EC225 public transport flights? As far as I can see UK CAA Safety Directive 2016/001 and Norwegian CAA Safety Directive 16/05616-1 are still in force as I write this.

Airbus never in fact grounded the aircraft. All they did was their usual pussyfooting around and issued a Safety INFORMATION Notice which indicated that AB "allied" themselves to the CAA directives which of course only applied to UK and Norway. I would be interested to see if all other national authorities other than UK and Norway have grounded aircraft under their jurisdiction.

"It's my understanding HUMS picked up on the EC225 bevel failure in advance but due to the once per day download pattern used by the operator at that time, it went out on its afternoon flight and subsequently failed resulting in the ditch. Had the HUMS card been downloaded after its morning flight and before its afternoon flight, the impending failure was clear and would have been caught, the aircraft would never have departed. That's why the industry changed to more frequent after flight HUMS downloads in the aftermath.

If it's a gearbox failure this time around which to be honest, is more probable than probably not, I would expect the HUMS to come under close scrutiny. The difficulty the operators have is deciphering the data and what it actually means to the airworthiness of the helicopter, there are a lot of instrumentation defects for example so these need to be filtered out and it can be difficult to detect genuine mechanical failure modes. HUMS probably catches a lot that we are all unaware of because they get to it in time, it's only when failures happen, HUMS comes under scrutiny. "




It seems to me that for HUMS to truly be effective it needs built in learning software and immediate, internal analysis. i.e. Install it with a manufactured baseline data (expectation of vibrations for a particular aircraft type). Perform a few flights in the learn mode (gathering data about that specific airframe) review the data for those flights to make sure it isn't "learning" any vibrations that are of concern.


From that point on if it detects a vibration outside the standard deviation it could illuminate a light (similar to a chip light). On more complex systems it could even indicate where the vibration is on the display.


I believe all of the technology exists. How far are we away from something like this?

Ok, well that makes at least 2 of us....so that statement from Airbus should be taken with a large dose of salt I think....


Oh, and to answer your question, no I would not be strapping one on at this point.

That makes me think of the time I asked one of the Indian pilots in Bombay how the Mil 8's were going offshore without flotation....he said well how do you know it won't float, they have never sunk one.

From the underslung MRH picture post 207, it would appear that the MGB Flared housing is missing from the Lift housing of the MRH shaft. Lack of lubrication to the mast bearings may be an issue, I believe on this model there is no way of verifying oil supply as there was on the 332 post MRH replacement. But HUMS should have picked this up.

There is also the barrel nut possibility, but I can’t see it causing drastic damage in such a short period of time.

Not any more.