Recently in Helicopter Category

Remember the mystery - rather a frightening mystery actually - of the AgustaWestland AW139 tailboom that suddenly collapsed during taxi last week? Well it's still a mystery and EASA has put out an emergency airworthiness directive based on an earlier AgustaWestland service bulletin.



It requires "detailed" inspections of the "tail panels" within 25 flight hours or 30 days and then repetitive inspections every 50 flight hours.

But on seven aircraft identified by serial number (31006, 31020, 31022, 31042, 31136, 31157 and 31248) the initial inspection has to be done within five hours. I don't immediately know what the significance of those seven aircraft is or what the common factor is. Update: it's suggested to me that all of them have previously suffered tailstrikes.

That's "came off" in the sense that nobody quite knows how. All happened a few days ago to a Gulf Helicopters machine at Doha, Qatar. Most importantly the tailboom departed during the taxi for take-off, which is obviously very odd but infinitely better than it happening half an hour later. The AW139 tailboom has history which may or may not turn out to be relevant. AgustaWestland on the case but apparently not clear themselves what caused this. And much Pprune discussion here.

Full-size picture, airworthiness directive, and AgustaWestland note to operators below. 

Getting Russia back into the global airliner market is obviously going to be hard going, but after visiting the country I think the Russians' prospects in helicopters are much better - and here's their next move.

There was a hint of this while I was at Kazan when deputy director Igor Bugakov said there might be an announcement in the sub-2t class at the MAKS show. But Russian Helicopters boss Andrey Shibitov didn't even mention the Mi-34 in his briefing, so I was still quite surprised to see them announce that it's going back into production - this time with a Turbomeca Arrius 2F engine. It'll be called the Sapsan (not sure what that means. Anyone help???) which means peregrine.

OK it's holiday blog post time. This summer's edition comes to you from Dorset in England and the Peloponnesian coast of Greece.

Little to report from the Peloponnese I'm afraid, beyond a constant stream of what I think were these guys below from the nearby base at Araxos. I'd forgotten the Hellenic Air Force still has some A-7s. And one of these C-130s hacking round the circuit.




But in England things were much more interesting. For one reason or another I ended up in this picturebook village in Dorset (which I think had better remain nameless. although no doubt someone will shortly have some fun with a comment.) What I didn't expect to find there was this:

And I'm actually there. I was the kind of 14 year-old who devoured aviation books and knew every Russian helicopter in existence (or known to NATO anyway.) That was deep in Cold War days and if anyone had told me I'd one day be in the heart of Russia at the factory making Mi-8s I'd never have believed them.

Truly a day of planes, trains and automobiles. Up at 05:00 in London, and in a minicab to Heathrow T5 at 06:00. For T5 the cab drivers like to take the motorway route all the way round the M25 to the west side of Heathrow instead of going through the suburbs as they've done forever to T1-4. I don't know if that's an intended consequence or the law of unintended consequences. But we're there in a record-breaking, for me, 30min. I've taken just shy of 2hr to get to Heathrow in the past.

T5 is marvellous as ever. I decide to sit down and watch the screens for my Moscow flight and it pops up as gate A13. I wonder where that is? Oh, I'm actually sitting at it. All of a sudden I feel that today's itinerary, with its substantial potential for catastrophe, is going to be OK.

Happily the February loss of a Bond Helicopters EC225 Super Puma in the North Sea was non-fatal, and now it turns out that luckily it was in benign conditions for the survivors. That's because of three serious and unsuspected phenomena that led to the search operation being much more difficult than you'd imagine in the circumstances. The AAIB reports on them today.

The helicopter, you may recall, descended fairly gently into the sea in darkness, visually observed by individuals on the rig to which it was heading. It floated and the 18 occupants quickly got into the liferafts. Between the aircraft, the liferafts and the individuals they had plenty of locator beacons. Nevertheless, it took a 27 minute search to find the survivors.

Here's why.

So, on to Hyeres and the navy. We're promised two CN235 flights during the tour and one C-130H. I'm absolutely gutted that what is probably my last chance to fly in a C-160 Transall is not going to happen. There's even one on the tarmac at Hyeres when we arrive to taunt me.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to the Paris Airshow where I may or may not have a good time. But I doubt I'll have as good as a time as I just did in France when I was on the end of the full fiery breath of France Inc's marketing machine in all its glory.

Like other nations, France has a plan to look after its key industries for the duration of the current crisis, and normal rules are pretty much suspended. And so I, and a large group of competitors, found ourselves on a seriously full-on tour of everything that is rotary in the French military and paramilitary over three days.

Here's a quick run-through of how it went. I've written about it some of it here and here already, and we're publishing more of that kind of thing during the show.

What this apparently shows, apologies for the quality - security cam I guess - is a CHC Sikorsky S-92 being hit by lightning while sitting on the ramp in Malaysia. Presumably at its base in Miri, Sarawak. The story goes that the discharge into the concrete below the aircraft blew holes in it showering debris into the air. Anyone have the pix?

And here's Sikorsky at some length on the subject of lightning, although obviously they're more interested in airborne strikes. These incidents can have dire consequences.