Almost 100 to miss fatal fuel tank deadline

CASA is yet to receive confirmation from more than 200 Robinson R44 helicopter operators about the status of their aircraft.

THE Civil Aviation Safety Authority is yet to receive confirmation from more than 200 Robinson R44 helicopter operators about the status of their aircraft in relation to a deadly fuel tank flaw.

Air safety investigators have estimated as many as a quarter of almost 400 R44s that needed modifications to all-aluminium fuel tanks aimed at reducing the risk of fire during a crash might not get the work done by the April 30 deadline.

CASA said on Wednesday it had received confirmation that 206 R44s would have modifications by the deadline, but it had yet to hear from 264 operators and wanted to do so as quickly as possible.

"CASA has made it clear that R44 helicopter operators following the Robinson maintenance program are required to install the new fuel tanks," a spokesman said. "CASA has received confirmation that 206 aircraft will have the tanks fitted by the required date. Those who have responded that the tanks won't be fitted by the date have indicated the aircraft will be grounded until such time as the tanks are fitted.

"Robinson R44 helicopters that have not been fitted with upgraded fuel tanks face being grounded from April 30."

CASA issued the grounding warning last Friday as an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on a fiery R44 crash that killed four former CSIRO scientists again highlighted a long-running campaign to get operators to address a design flaw in the R44's fuel tank that causes them to split on impact

It represented a hardening of the regulator's approach to operators who do not, by the end of the month, install a fuel tank bladder designed to reduce the risk of spills during crashes.

In what the ATSB called "a tragic outcome" the four former scientists were on joy flight to a restaurant at Bulli Tops south of Sydney, on March 21. Pilot Gerald Haddad, a former CSIRO chief of industrial physics, and colleagues Anthony Farmer, Donald Price and John Dunlop all died when the chopper's main rotor struck a tree and it burst into flames after rolling on its side.

The R44 helicopter, owned by Bankstown Helicopters, was the third of its type involved in similar fatal crashes in NSW in the past two years and was due to have the modifications done within a few flight hours.

There are 484 R44 helicopters registered in Australia, and 392 of these had serial numbers covered by a service bulletin issued in late 2010, requiring all R44 helicopters with all-aluminium fuel tanks to be fitted with the bladders.

CASA wrote to all operators in February asking for an update on the status of their aircraft and whether it was in compliance with the Robinson fuel tank service bulletin. The number of replies has increased since March 25, when CASA had received 142 responses indicating 106 helicopters had been modified and 37 had not, but authorities remain frustrated by the slow response.

Air safety investigators found 247 bladder kits had been either fitted or supplied by four Australian organisations and another 23 were on order.

They were told by Robinson about 1800 retrofit kits had either been factory-installed or supplied worldwide for about 4000 affected helicopters, including 300 for Australia.

"Although there has been a relatively high rate of compliance with this bulletin compared to other countries, there are still in the order of 100 R44 aircraft for which there appears to be no indication of a replacement kit being ordered," they said. "The ATSB considers this situation an unnecessary and significant risk to the occupants of unmodified R44 aircraft."

The manufacturer has known about problems with its fuel systems in crashes since at least 2006, when it issued safety notice recommending all occupants of its helicopters wear fire-retardant flight suits, gloves and hoods or helmets in case of fire.

A year after the 2010 service bulletin, it had shipped only 400 retrofit kits, each costing about $US6800 ($6466), for about 10 per cent of the global fleet.

The company said the modifications should be done as soon as possible but originally set a deadline of December 2014. It subsequently brought forward the deadline to December this year and then, last September, to the end of this month.

The issue hit the news locally following a fatal accident in Cessnock in February, 2011, in which the pilot survived but a flight instructor and passenger died after the aircraft caught fire.

It gained impetus with a second incident a year later involving the high-profile deaths of award-winning American cinematographer Mike deGruy and Australian writer-producer Andrew Wight in a privately chartered R44 also owned by Bankstown Helicopters. The two were reportedly about to record a film sequence and were scouting locations for director James Cameron when the R44 helicopter crashed on take-off from Jaspers Brush Aerodrome in the Jervis Bay area of NSW and burst into flames. Since then, the ATSB and CASA have been strongly urging operators of R44s to fit the bladder and the regulator has been progressively bolstering its stance.

In June, CASA published an airworthiness bulletin highlighting the post-crash survivability of R44s fitted with the bladder tank and strongly recommending operators incorporate them "at their earliest convenience". This coincided with an offer from Robinson of financial incentives to install the fuel tank kits before the end of last year.

The manufacturer's move in September to issue service bulletin SB-78B and bring back the compliance date to April was followed by the ATSB in November listing R44 fuel tanks as one of its Safety Watch concerns. Safety Watch highlights safety concerns and urges the industry to give them heightened attention.

The ATSB also questioned CASA about the possibility of mandating the requirement, and was told a notice of proposed rule-making had been drafted for a unique Australian airworthiness directive (AD). But it shied away from doing so because the certifying authority, the US Federal Aviation Administration, had not done so.

CASA said it had been consulting with the FAA's certification office, which had told it it would not be taking corrective action because an analysis of accident data and post-impact fires had not shown any inconsistencies between R44s and other similar helicopters.

With the ATSB's interim report imminent, CASA last week issued a service bulletin to operators warning those following the Robinson system of maintenance that they would be breaching regulations if they failed to meet the service bulletin deadlines.

On the day of the report's release, it bit the bullet and said any helicopter without the upgraded fuel tanks faced being grounded from April 30.

"All R44 helicopter operators have been given ample notice of this requirement, with the first fuel tank service bulletin issued by Robinson in December, 2010," it said.

The interim report found that the evidence indicated the Bulli Tops accident involved a relatively low-energy impact "such that the impact forces would have been unlikely to lead to fatalities".

"This is the third R44 accident in two years with similar characteristics and (a) tragic outcome," it said. "In addition, R44 accidents result in a significantly higher proportion of post-impact fires than other similar helicopter types."

Investigators said Bankstown Helicopters had planned to replace the all-aluminium tanks with bladder tanks before the due date and had already replaced a rotor brake switch identified as a possible ignition source.

The company told The Australian the work was scheduled to take place after another 15 hours of flight, and would have been carried out last Monday.

"It was due, it was booked in. It's just a tragedy. We'd flown 2100 hours in that aircraft without an incident," said a company employee, who declined to be named.

ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan said the investigators were looking at why people had not responded more quickly to the original warnings but did not yet have an answer.

Noting the higher than average take-up rate in Australia, he said: "Comparatively we're doing better but we're not doing as well as we would have liked to see.

"We've been pushing this for some time, as you're probably aware, so we will try to understand what's driving this. And it might be lack of understanding of the regulatory framework for maintenance and various other things but that's speculative at this point."

Mr Dolan said the ATSB had been told it took six to eight weeks for a fuel tank kit to reach Australia and about a week to fit it.

He said for a while there had been only one certified manufacturer of the kits and production was unlikely to have met demand but there were now two of them.

However, he believed availability of kits could be a constraint for those still to do the work.

Australian Helicopter Industry Association spokesman Rob Rich said he believed human nature had led some operators to delay doing the modifications.

"As a part-time auditor, I go around checking companies for the operating clients and you just get frustrated. You say, 'Why didn't you get this done?', and they say they're too busy."