Sikorsky rejects claims of technical cause for Copterline crash

Suspect servo given clean bill of health, says manufacturer

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Sikorsky, the world's largest manufacturer of helicopters, has vehemently rejected the view that the S-76 helicopter built by the firm and operated by Copterline would have plunged into the Gulf of Finland close to Tallinn in August 2005 as a result of a failure in the servo of the main rotor.
      In a statement to this effect sent to Helsingin Sanomat, the company points out that 28 years of service, nine million hours in the air, regular testing, materials analyses, and studies of the operation of servos in use have not revealed any problems in the S-76 model.
     
This contrasts strikingly with the viewpoint of the helicopter's owners Copterline, who filed suit in New York against the manufacturer before Christmas, seeking damages of USD 60 million (c. EUR 46 million) over the accident that caused the death of 14 people, six of them Finnish.
      Sikorsky are preparing for possible demands for compensation on behalf of the fourteen victims, and the company was therefore unwilling to confirm or deny that Sikorsky and relatives of victims had already reached a settlement for considerable damages to be paid on behalf of the two U.S. citizens who were among the dead.
     
The small rotor servo has become a large question-mark for Sikorsky, part of the giant United Technologies conglomerate. A similar component is in service in thousands of the helicopters it has manufactured.
      Over the years there have been a number of accidents whose ultimate cause has remained unclear, but which have borne a striking resemblance to the sequence of events in the Tallinn crash.
      If these can convincingly be traced back to a faulty servo, then Sikorsky could be facing a deluge of court cases.
     
The company's statement firmly rejects such a conclusion, and states that Sikorsky and the servo's sub-contractor manufacturer Hydraulic Reserach Textron have carried out their own exhaustive tests "together with the NTSB [the National Transportation Safety Board] and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]".
      The NTSB, a U.S. government independent organization responsible for investigating accidents involving aviation, highways, ships, pipelines, and railways in the United States, is also represented on the commission of inquiry investigating the Copterline accident, and the FAA is the ultimate U.S. authority that determines the airworthiness certification of helicopters. The NTSB has tested the suspect servo and has passed its findings to the accident commission, but has not made the results public. They will apparently come out in the final report on the crash, currently expected in April.
     
Sikorsky's statement to Helsingin Sanomat effectively disclosed the results of these tests, or at least the company's own interpretation of them.
      The statement asserts that despite being subjected to deliberate strains and loss of fluid, consistent with the alleged conditions of the accident, the servo performed perfectly.
      The company did not elaborate, however, on why it had published an urgent maintenance instruction shortly before Christmas, calling for more frequent inspections of the servo.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Copterline seeks massive damages in US court from Sikorsky (2.1.2007)

Helsingin Sanomat