Interview with Kurt Robinson

KR: Yeah, especially if they’re seeing something unusual in the field so we know it.

AMT: The customers can now contact RHC in many different ways.

KR: We have machines back in our experimental department that are running 24 hours a day doing fatigue testing on components. But no matter how much we do here, and how much testing we do, until you take that helicopter and you send it to the South Pole or wherever it’s going to go and let it operate in that environment, we just don’t know. That to me, is what the 66 is going through now. The 22 has been out there 30 years and it’s pretty rare to have someone in the field see something that we haven’t seen before. Here in Southern California we can’t duplicate the things they run into in the field and we can’t duplicate what a mechanic is going to do.

AMT: Does RHC see any regulatory challenges specifically related to helicopter maintenance?

KR: Most countries or people that work on helicopters outside the United States have to get the equivalent of a Part 145 (repair station); we made that a requirement as far as the R-66. We weren’t sure how that would go over but we felt that having a true maintenance organization when you’re dealing with a $800,000 helicopter made some sense to us. We wanted to cut out the people that just wanted to sell helicopters and not maintain them so we felt that by having a Part 145 (requirement) we could bring the inspector and all the requirements that are necessary.

We were stunned when everyone said, oh yeah that’s what we want to do. Everybody overseas said we already have that. The surprised us. I’m surprised that here in the U.S. they don’t push for a little more stringent levels.

And all the fatal accidents because of non inspection have been in the United States.