I recently came across the video of the accident discussed in this thread, so have looked over comments about it.
But turning to the Puma, there must have been a reason behind the cockpit doors no longer being able to be used? Earlier accidents or incidents? Did it apply to all Pumas? Or only those of a particular operator?

The recent incident in Malaysia involving the AW189 appears it has some similarities to the AW169 event.

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-...ay-in-malaysia

I think it was fairly clear that only the RAF ones....

Sadly, FED is no longer around to give a historical explanation about the decision (although others may be able to).

The cockpit doors, even on. a new EC225 LP tend to fit badly and are of such “Light” construction they are hard to close and lock as they tend to “flex” a bit.
They don’t get any better with age.
That has been my experience anyhow.

For unknown reason, when I first scrolled through this thread, it only took me as far as #60. Now I see the rest.

So if that RAF accident related to loss of a rear sliding door, then why the ban on the cockpit doors which are unrelated? Furthermore, was there any redesign activity to prevent such an occurrence on rest of SA330 fleet? I read somewhere else on PPRuNE of another case of loss of a Puma sliding door in flight. That one landed safely.

I don't think there is any connection between the events and the fixed doors policy, but someone like ShyTorque will no doubt know the history. All of which is probably better placed in a separate thread to this one.

212, you would be best placed to know but wasn't there a Puma (Bristow?) that lost a door in Borneo or there abouts with fatalities to all, early eighties an aging brain thinks?

My recollection is that at least one cockpit door had come adrift, resulting in the engineering edict, which most of us saw as an overreaction and at times a great inconvenience. But it was before my time (I didn’t join the Puma fleet until 1979, around the time when “Far East Driver” left the RAF.

As I mentioned earlier, it was very difficult to properly secure an RAF Puma for the night. The cockpit door keys were removed from the aircraft; although the cabin door keys were kept on the undercarriage switch pin. In my experience, problems sometimes occurred when aircraft were left parked in army barracks! Drunken squaddies do some very stupid things, such as climbing on top and jettisoning doors from the outside. I remember flying from base early one morning and passing two of our squadron Pumas returning from an overnight stop, going in the opposite direction with no cabin doors fitted! That certainly got the brain going, bearing in mind previous accidents caused by cabin doors coming off in flight. As soon as we landed we got on the phone to base to ask if we had missed some new edict about doors. In fact both aircraft had been parked up for the night and the crews returned to find the door jettison handles had been pulled! The aircraft were being flown back at low speed with the doors stowed internally.

Hi Megan, I assume you are referring to this accident? https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/33132 Section 1.18.4 of this report discusses it: https://assets.publishing.service.go...011_G-REDL.pdf

The fact that you refer to a door coming off is intriguing because the only reference I have seen to that is in the Appendix to the formal report where Aerospatiale dispute the findings around the MGB failure and (lamely) attempt to blame it on a pilot's door coming of! Shades of the Norwegian EC225 aftermath and AH insinuating CHC had made errors.

With the Puma accident, the MGB had been making metal for weeks and the Chief Engineer had been diligently collecting the particles and sellotaping them to graph paper to monitor the quantity, in line with the maximum allowable from the AMM - 7 square millimetres. Unfortunately, he misinterpreted this as 7 millimetres squared. I think when the MGB failed it had about 29 square millimetres recorded and that was after it had already been flushed once and the count restarted! The UK AAIB did a substitution test using UK CAA engineering surveyors, and 50% of them made the same mistake! There was some waffle about confusing metric units, but I don't buy it as it's no different to square inches or inches squared, but it happened.

The flight was carrying Shell wives from Miri (Malaysia) to Bandar (Brunei) on a shopping trip, and the failure occurred just after crossing the border, so the aircraft fell into the swamp next to Kuala Belait. Accordingly, the Brunei Shell Aviation dept assisted in the recovery of wreckage etc, and they took a number of photos to show the scene before it was disturbed - I have seen them and they are not pleasant viewing!

Guys, switch to the puma topic :)

That was the word from an Oz based Bristow chap shortly after the accident, cabin door was mentioned. A very, very sad day for Shell, I can only imagine, wives out for a fun day. :(:{

Probably early conjecture then - the idea of the MGB seizing and the rotor head coming off probably didn't enter anybody's minds then!

Wow!!