CHC Aker BP
 

CHC has won an extension of the Aker contract. Staying with the L variant despite multiple L1s and L2s available. Sticking with the safety reputation of the older variant

I wasn't aware of any problems with the 322L1.

They may want to rethink their other press statement 2 weeks ago then !
According to Mr Abbey (Regional Director CHC UK) the ‘Market is moving on from the Super Puma’ .
I guess some people just don’t know what a Super Puma is .
Typical of the ignorance around the whole debacle.
They very carefully mention only an ‘AS332L’ in this latest press release and there’s not a ‘Super Puma’ mentioned at all !
The hypocrisy is wonderfully ironic in CHC’s case especially.

Yes the 'corporate speak' was particulary interesting around safety. While CHC themselves were, as far as we know entirely blameless, in the Turøy accident they have certainly been very unlucky in this regard.

Certainly not recently. As you know the L1 MGB failure was more than 20 yrs ago and from an unrelated fault. My point was that with L2s available at much reduced cost and with their excellent modern systems they still stuck with the older type.

Which one was that? Are you mixing it up with the SA330J in Brunei in 1980? An L1 and an L are the same aircraft except for minor changes in engine limitations to give the L1 better hot & hi capabilities (Makila1A vs Makila 1A1).

The only 332 gearbox failure I know about was the logging aircraft that had a barbeque plate fracture. This was because they were not recording the flight cycles correctly.

Hi,

No I was referring to LN-OPG in 1997 when NS workers started falling out of love with the Puma. That's why I was careful to point out the blade separation had a different cause (fatique in an engine drive spline). But blade separation with catastrophic consequebces. The HUMS debate came to the fore and the precautionary water landings of a couple of aircraft (false alarms on emergency lubrication systems) and a couple of entirely unrelated Puma incidents got the type something of an unfortunate reputation in E&P - largely underserved as taken accross the world and including all Puma sub types its record is pretty good. But in the NS with the history of the past 20 years and the fact that despite the best efforts of the investigators we still don't have a definitive root cause of the MGB failure in Turøy it is hard to rehabilitate its reputation. Hence CHC stick with the earlier type. As anyone familiar with PR knows the complete absence of the word Puma is unlikely to have been an oversight.