R44 report on 60 Minutes

[BigBlackDog]

Just watching a report on 60 minutes with the allegation that the Robinson fuel tanks don't comply with various requirements, mostly they don't survive a 15 meter drop as they should.
I realise they are most likely exaggerating and maybe ignoring other issues, but does anyone here know much about this? Is it actually a R44 trait that they burst into flames when they roll over? Does the 22 do it too? Seems likely that they would have similar issues. Hard thing aircraft safety

[Ean Austral]

Just watching a report on 60 minutes with the allegation that the Robinson fuel tanks don't comply with various requirements, mostly they don't survive a 15 meter drop as they should.
I realise they are most likely exaggerating and maybe ignoring other issues, but does anyone here know much about this? Is it actually a R44 trait that they burst into flames when they roll over? Does the 22 do it too? Seems likely that they would have similar issues. Hard thing aircraft safety

Think they answered it for you, yes same problem.

Funny our daughter who is an apprentice aircraft avionics tech, told us about 2 months ago , if we ever won a joy flight and it was in a R44 DO NOT go. Thought it was just talk around the workplace, but maybe not.

Cheers Ean

[BigBlackDog]

My boss got rid of his Robinson helicopters, I don't think you'd get him back in one ever

[GregTD5]

The 60 minutes report said it all really.

There has been plenty of survivable crashes all around the world, that have ended up killing the occupants, due to the post impact fire caused by ruptured tanks.
The solution has been to install a bladder inside of the tank, but only became mandatory in Australia after the Bulli crash earlier this year. Eyewitnesses state that these guys survived the crash, only to be burnt to death in the fire.
Most of the pictures showed aircraft that were still intact after the crash, but destroyed by the post crash fire.

Greg

[cripesamighty]

Several years ago, a mate who flies helicopters for a living told me not to fly in any R22's of R44's in Australia. Most of the ones he had anything to do with had the circuit breaker that logs the total hours flown pulled so you did not know how many hours the things had logged. Very handy if you want to save some money stretching out the maintenance, but a bit dicey if you want to fly in them.

Don't know if it is still the case but he mentioned Australia had a worse than average accident rate with them partly due to this and other idiosyncrasies with the type - low inertia rotor system, sensitive controls, problems with belt drive, problems with blades failing in flight, control parameters exceeded, etc.

Also, a few too many Australian ones had component failures that should never have happened if they were serviced on time and components replaced as per true number of hours flown.

Cripesamighty