Dear Editor,
I reply to Messrs Carter, Haynes and Thompson’s comments on my analysis of the Bell 206 BIII helicopter’s suitability to Guyana and the quality of the decision to purchase them.
My name is Learie Constancetine Barclay. I am a former Guyana Defence Force Air Corps Officer and a trained military aviator. I am a Federal Aviation Authority (USA) rated Com-mercial Pilot (certificate # 2604461).
I am respected and recognised in the local aviation industry as an expert in aviation operations management and regulations matters. I am currently employed at Roraima Airways as an aviation executive responsible for the management of the company’s aircraft operations.
I am a real person.
Bell 206BIII helicopter
I have stated I believe, quite clearly in my earlier letter, the inadequacies of the Bell 206BIII helicopter.
My comments centre on the Bell 206B III model (the one we purchased), yet the gentlemen try to confuse the public by sprinkling performance and weight figures in from the larger and more powerful 206L IV model. If the helicopter max weight for sling load is 3350 pounds, and the empty weight is 1954 pounds, if you lift 1500 pounds you are now over 100 pounds overloaded without even pilot or a drop of fuel. Can you specify which one of the helicopters can lift 1500 pounds?
I am deemed to have inflated the operating cost of the machine, and a manufacturer website figure is quoted instead.
In my real world of aviation operations management, the manufacturer’s quoted figure is never correct, and to prove so, it is always accompanied by a disclaimer saying it is only a guide. If you have the luxury of another operator of the same aircraft around, you talk to them and get a real figure, and then you use your local prices to fine tune for the real thing. In our real world also, since fuel is required for operation of the aircraft, it is definitely included in the operating cost.
They either fail to understand, or deign to mislead my analysis of the effectiveness of this light helicopter and its unsuitability for use in hot, mountainous terrain with any large payload.
Their dismissal of the age of the airframe is both laughable and dangerous. Metal has a life. While the rotables (spares that have to be changed) on the helicopter are replaced by flight time limitation, the airframe is not changed and encounters aviation’s greatest demon, metal fatigue. If you are lucky, you see the signs before and ground the ship. If you are not, people die. Most law enforcement agencies retire their Bell 206BIIIs at about 10,000 hours because the manoeuvres they execute regularly with the helicopter stress the airframe, and the operational costs of any aircraft climb with age. Here we are buying aged airframes to be used for law enforcement.
My analysis of this helicopter is fair, and as I have pointed out and we know painfully sometimes, that what is good for other countries may not be good for us.
Bell 412 helicopter
I apologise for the omission of the word ‘Griffon’ in my earlier letter. The military version of the Bell 412 is in fact the ‘CH46 Griffon’ as used by the Canadian Armed Forces and the Venezuelan Army among others.
The fact our Bell 412 has only flown 4500 hours in 28 years is not a strange phenomenon. Military aircraft of that type in peacetime usually gross about 120 hours a year, due to the fact that they spend their life on standby waiting for the odd emergency or deploy for training to keep the flight crew sharp. Commercial aircraft on the other hand are assessed by the amount of hours flown, as that is how they earn revenue.
But why has the Bell 412, the medium lift helicopter in the world with the highest despatch reliability, and the lowest seat-mile costs in its class proven to be such a ‘horribly expensive’ ship in Guyana?
Why is this helicopter the mainstay of the offshore oil aviation operations? Offshore operations require the highest standard of equipment, safe, reliable, powerful, and able to carry good payloads with lots of fuel for emergencies, and above all cost effectiveness. The offshore industry is on the cutting edge of aviation operations management.
Why is this superb machine so unreliable only in Guyana?
There is a saying that a bad carpenter always quarrels about his tools.
All the pilots who have ever had the honour of touching the Bell 412 say the machine is the best thing since sliced bread. Pilots are not perfect. A skid was once broken due to a hard landing. So by the process of elimination, the bad carpenter must be the maintenance crews.
Lest the Guyanese public be carried away with your ridiculous division of the money spent on the helicopter over the years by the amount of flight hours, I am forced to give another real life lesson on operating cost calculation.
Operating cost has two components: 1) Fixed, consisting of licence costs of aircraft, insurance costs, administration including salaries and equipment directly related to the aircraft, calendar maintenance; 2) Variable, consisting of fuel, engine reserve, rotor/propeller reserve, pilot pay, scheduled maintenance cost, spares, landing/navigation fees, miscellaneous items.
The total monies spent on the aircraft include unscheduled maintenance which definitely cannot be included in the operating cost of the aircraft, and paint an entirely unfair picture of the aircraft’s viability. This is something the proponents of the Bell 206BIII deal misrepresented to the government and I believe was one of the causes for the imprudent decision.
Unscheduled maintenance is as a result of a failure of a component, failure of maintenance procedures, damage to the aircraft, or an airworthiness directive by the aircraft manufacturer/Civil Aviation Authority.
In addition, improper maintenance of the 412 which is a sophisticated ship will drive up the cost. The government has spent millions of dollars to train maintenance personnel to the required level. Some of it has been successful, some has not. Of note is a senior member of the maintenance staff who despite expensive and extensive training in the UK in the 1990s on avionics and radar is yet to successfully complete his examinations for Guyanese certification, resulting in the organisation, for many years, having to pay in excess of $500,000 per month to a private firm to be its avionics specialists. Due to his lack of qualification, this engineer therefore only operates under special dispensations and supervision from the Civil Aviation Authority.
The Bell 412 in my memory was only maintained to a high standard in recent times when it was under the arm of Major Gavin Huntley, former Chief Engineer, and now Chief Engineer of St Lucia Helicopters.
The poor maintenance has resulted in high costs of overhaul. When the Bell 412 encountered engine problems in the 1990s and the engine was sent to Dallas Airmotive for overhaul, the Strip Report which I saw, detailed a story of massive corrosion inside the entire engine. The report concluded that this was the cause of the engine trouble and was caused by “poor maintenance practices” including the lack of the most basic of maintenance practices for the preservation of turbine engines, the compressor wash/rinse. The result was the US$850,000 figure quoted by Mr Haynes for the overhaul. That report should be made public along with the parts which were returned and should still be around now (in the dump room).
Turbine engine overhauls are not a fixed cost. Yes, it is possible for you to spend US$850,000 if the engine has been poorly maintained and has corrosion from front to back. If you maintain and fly the engine correctly, the overhaul cost will be as low as US$65,000 for the PT6T Twinpac in the Bell 412.
I implore you gentlemen not to demonise the Bell 412 helicopter. We are lucky to have one. If you want to defend your bad decision, do so. Do not include the Bell 412 in the decision and do not mislead your superiors about the facts on the helicopter. If it was such a bad and expensive ship it would not possess the renown it holds today. The question is, why can’t we operate it right, while so many others in the world love it, military, law enforcement, and offshore drilling groups are betting their life on it, and civil operators are making so much money flying it?
Unfair lampooning of pilot
I have refrained from public comment on this issue. The persons who are attempting to ‘conveniently’ blame the pilot for the burnt engine on GDF-2 are trying to cover up the acquisition of defective equipment.
Why was the fuel control unit changed on GDF-2 if the pilot burnt the engine by incorrect start procedure? The fuel control unit is located, by common sense, outside of the combustion chamber in a location where it will not be readily over heated due to engine operation. If it were anywhere else the engine would certainly not be certified by Civil Aviation Authority of the country of manufacture.
When the pilot is starting the Allison 250-C20 engine, he turns on the starter motor which turns the engine to about 15% of its operating speed (based on normal ambient temperature). He then inputs fuel via ‘cracking’ open the throttle to ‘flight idle.’ At this point he monitors the temperatures carefully to ensure they do not exceed the limits. When the engine has started and reached its self sustaining speed, he releases the starter as it is no longer needed.
In the event that the temperatures exceed, or rise at such a rate that is reasonable to expect that they will exceed the limits, the pilot will close the throttle to cut the fuel flowing to the engine, while leaving the starter on to keep the air flowing through the engine, and cool the engine down. That is all he can do.
If he closes the throttle and the temperature continues to rise, it means that the fuel control unit has not responded correctly to the throttle inputs and is continuing to flow fuel, or it has flowed so much fuel in excess of what the throttle has demanded that there is enough to continue burning and temperature rise.
If the pilot was late in closing the throttle and overtemped the engine, the turbine section would be replaced and the helicopter would fly again. The Fuel Control Unit would be perfectly fine. So why was the fuel control unit required to be changed to make the helicopter airworthy again? Because the fuel control unit was defective.
What is the significance of this change at the same time as ‘burning’ the engine? The fuel control unit, which had been repaired once before, obviously dumped fuel in excess of the pilot’s command into the engine and caused the overtemp. I have never heard such absolute nonsense in my life. Human error by a pilot cannot damage a fuel control unit and overtemp an engine. I am tempted to call the statement other things but that would not be prudent in the public domain.
If you buy an old helicopter, you are likely to have more old components. You are likely to have more failures. If you want to ‘cover your tracks’ you blame the pilot for the engine ‘burn’ so your superiors who don’t know much about aviation don’t realise that your advice on the prudence of choosing the specific machine was flawed.
It is a cowardly act, and the pilot should be apologised to for it. No pilot wants the words ‘pilot error’ unfairly attested to him in any incident in which he is a part.
I have little time to waste and I will not respond to any other letters on this issue. My comments and analysis of this situation are backed by my years of experience as a professional aviator and my real world daily involvement in aviation operations management. Should any of you gentlemen be man enough to publicly declare your identity, and publicly debate me on this issue at any time, my telephone number is 592-665-4998 and my email address is leariebarclay@hotmail.com. My only concerns at this time are that tax dollars are spent correctly; citizens are responded to in time of need at any time of the day or night; fellow pilots are not forced to use unsuitable equipment in the execution of their duties – they too have families who want them to come back home; Guyanese intelligence is not trampled upon yet again.
Yours faithfully,
Learie Barclay
