Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR NICK
WHITNEY, MR
DAVID PITCHFORTH,
MR DEREK
SHARPLES AND
MR ALEX
SHARP
19 MAY 2009
Q40 Mr Jenkin: We have just heard
these Pumas are doing 35,000.
Mr Whitney: It is only limited
to 10,000 by the requirement that was set in the early days. We
have actually done studies that are ongoing right now with the
Ministry of Defence, and the aircraft is capable of being extended
to 15,000 hours.
Q41 Mr Jenkin: That is still half
of 30,000 hours. It does not sound such good value for money?
Mr Whitney: You are not flying
anything like that rate in the military. In a civil environment
you are flying much, much more.
Q42 Robert Key: How do you decide
when extending the out-of-service date introduces unacceptable
risk? How do you decide in engineering terms, or is it not an
engineering decision? It is a statistical decision, or a legal
decision. How do you decide?
Mr Whitney: I do not think that
is an industry decision. Industry will have a requirement to upgrade
an aircraft and we will upgrade that to within the design specification
that is laid upon us. That may or may not prove possible. If you
require full crashworthiness on an old aircraft that may not be
possible because physically the structure is incapable of being
upgraded to that point.
Q43 Robert Key: Have I got it right,
you have said it is not the manufacturer's responsibility to make
the judgment about the risk of extending the life of a helicopter?
Mr Whitney: Clearly there is an
absolute judgment to be made, but there is a specification that
will be laid upon the manufacturer that we will be complying with.
Q44 Robert Key: Who makes that specification?
Mr Sharples In fact it is the
responsibility of the design authority for the helicopter. In
the case of Eurocopter, we are the design authority for the design
of our own helicopters. To answer your question directly: it is
the responsibility of our engineering team to make the statistical
analysis on failure rate. To give you a number, if I may: the
commercial certification requirements oblige the design of passenger-carrying
machines—be they helicopters or airplanes—not to fail
within 1 x 109 flying hours. There is a statistical obligation
on the designers to ensure that aircraft will not fail; and, therefore,
the designers build in redundancy either to the airframe or to
the systems to ensure that that failure rate in all circumstances
be it original design or upgrade is maintained. In our case, for
the Puma upgrade our engineering team has calculated, as you would
call it, the "consequences" of the upgrade programme.
We have worked jointly hand-in-hand with the MoD, and it is a
joint decision in this case—it will be a joint decision
between industry and the MoD—to upgrade the programme based
on upgrade experience that we already have, for example, in the
Puma fleet in Portugal, and in the military fleets in the Middle
East, which have already been upgraded.
Q45 Robert Key: The Ministry of Defence
is going to spend £235 million, is it, on upgrading the 43
Pumas, when we know that the Puma is not crashworthy and is therefore
not fit for purpose. Is that not true?
Mr Sharples: I would not comment
on whether or not—
Q46 Robert Key: Why will you not
comment?
Mr Sharples: I will comment on
the question of the life extension programme, Mr Key. The objective
I think of an extension programme is to improve the performance,
the availability, the reliability, the easiness of operation of
the helicopter and, therefore, the safety of that helicopter as
well. The life extension programme of the Puma fleet will see
the aircraft re-engined; new avionics systems; new digital autopilot;
it will see new engine control systems; new tail rotor blades;
a strengthened tail. All of those enhancements will ensure that
that helicopter is more reliable, easier to operate and more available
for the next 10 years than it has been in the past.
Q47 Robert Key: None of which has
anything to do with its crashworthiness?
Mr Sharples: I think it does,
if I may. I think strengthening the tail; I think providing greater
power margin; I think ensuring that engine control is simpler
and easier to operate for the pilots; yes, I think that does improve
crashworthiness.
Q48 Chairman: Could you explain that,
please? Can you talk us through why engine control improves crashworthiness?
Mr Sharples: Automatic engine
control allows the engines to respond more quickly when power
is called for by the pilot. Therefore, in a situation where the
pilot may find himself and his crew operating in marginal conditions,
for example in hot and high conditions in mountains or in very
severe weather conditions, his ability to call and expect to receive
additional power at critical moments makes the aircraft a safer,
more reliable machine.
Q49 Robert Key: Will the recent High
Court judgment about the Human Rights Act aspect of this make
any difference to your decision-making when it comes to the extension
of aircraft life, knowing that you are going to be responsible
for sending military personnel into theatre in an aircraft that
you must know is not crashworthy?
Mr Sharples: Once again, the Puma
is a very crashworthy aircraft and will be more so—
Q50 Robert Key: I am sorry, did I
hear that right: it "is a very crashworthy aircraft"?
Mr Sharples: I did say that. The
Puma is designed according to the design standards required by
both the civil aviation authorities and the military aviation
authorities.
Q51 Robert Key: What percentage figure
is it in terms of the crashworthiness scale?
Mr Sharples: I am sorry, I do
not have the figure.
Q52 Robert Key: Someone trotted out
some statistics a few minutes ago about, "This helicopter
is 50%, that one is 90%". What about the Puma?
Mr Sharples: Do you mean in terms
of its accident rate, for example? Yes, I can give you a statistic
on that. Offshore in the civilian world the fatal accident rate
of the Super Puma is currently running at less than 0.5 fatal
accidents/100,000 flying hours—that is half the average
for offshore oil and gas helicopters in general.
Q53 Chairman: Is that the most dangerous
aspect of flying that the Pumas do?
Mr Sharples: I am not sure I can
answer that question, Chairman. You could make a judgment yourself
on how dangerous offshore oil and gas operations are. They are
certainly very challenging; certainly a very difficult and demanding
environment.
Robert Key: If the Ministry of Defence
decided not to spend £235 million upgrading these non-crashworthy
aircraft, what would be available instead?
Chairman: I want to say the witness has
said that he considers that the Puma is crashworthy, so
I do not want you to ask the question in a way that denies the
witness's answer.
Q54 Robert Key: I have my opinion,
Chairman, but of course I accept your advice. What alternative
is available to the Ministry of Defence to purchase or to upgrade,
if they decided that they were not prepared to take the risk of
flying with Puma?
Mr Sharples: Once again, the risk
associated with the upgrade is a shared risk both between industry
and the Ministry of Defence. The design authority for the Puma
is industry and, therefore, it is our responsibility to ensure
the integrity of the design.
Q55 Robert Key: So this is going
to be a question for the Ministry of Defence, for Ministers, I
guess, in the end, because they are going to have to make the
judgment. Could I just ask about the Sea King Sikorsky, and the
fact that here we have a wonderful aircraft, in which we flew
quite recently, but it is 40 years old, and there is a proposal
to extend the life by a further four years for the Mk7s and another
six years for the Mk4s. There were cracks in the mainframe 10
years ago; there are cracks in the mainframe now. How realistic
is it to keep this wonderful old antique flying on operational
duties? After all, it is now going to go to Afghanistan with Carson
blades and that is wonderful but is it worth the risk?
Mr Sharp: I defer to my colleague
from AgustaWestland. From a Sikorsky point of view, clearly we
have looked at it in the commercial—our business is both
commercial and military. We have moved on in the commercial world
and developed the S-92, which we have put out into the fleet—there
are over 100 of them out there now; the ones in the North Sea
flying at 185-190 hours/ month; there are four of them that are
now deployed with your UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency in pretty
challenging conditions up on Sumburgh and Stornoway and doing
some pretty great things. I cannot comment on whether that upgrade
is the right thing or not really. That judgment is going to come
through MoD; it is going to come through combatant commanders
with the operational requests that are going to go to the requirements
officers in Whitehall, and they are going to go and find out what
the best piece of kit is that you want to put out on the front
line. There are obviously other alternatives in the market today
that you could purchase.
Q56 Chairman: Mr Whitney, do you
need to add anything on that?
Mr Whitney: No, not on Sea King.
I think the same arguments apply. It is an old aircraft but you
can upgrade it, and it is operating in Afghanistan as we speak.
In terms of the direct question about what alternatives—I
think the alternatives are in line with the early questioning
about reducing the fleet numbers and potentially buying more of
what you have got.
Q57 Mrs Moon: The Royal Aeronautical
Society has expressed a concern that the Ministry of Defence's
industrial strategy could have an erosion of the UK's rotorcraft
defence technological and industrial base. Would you agree with
that? Does the strategy provide an adequate basis for your relationship
with the MoD?
Mr Pitchforth: The Defence Industrial
Strategy is the reason I am sat here today from Boeing. It requested
that Boeing put down more of an in-country presence with engineering
capability and what was described as a "footprint",
to give the MoD the ability to interact with a company in an easier
manner. We are doing that and we embraced the Defence Industrial
Strategy as a good thing, which gave clarity to industry; and
we have invested because of it and we would actually like to see
that strategy reinvigoured and picked up and moved forward again
so we can continue to use it as a roadmap to how we should be
engaging with the Ministry of Defence.
Mr Whitney: If I take the AgustaWestland
answer, we fully supported the Defence Industrial Strategy; indeed,
we signed a strategic partnering arrangement with the Ministry
of Defence in June 2006 and have seen real benefit from that in
terms of the way in which we work together and plan together;
and look to manage some of the problems that there are in terms
of managing the helicopter fleet with a small budget, shall we
say. I think the more that can be done in terms of partnering
and strategic partnering under the guise of the Defence Industrial
Strategy the better.
Mr Sharp: If I could just address
that from a Sikorsky point of view. I think less of a focus for
us—certainly we are not part of your Defence Industrial
Strategy per se—but we certainly from a corporate standpoint,
would look at partnering as so important across all of our different
military and customer bases. From a military standpoint on the
support side, we have partnering agreements in Columbia; we have
got manufacturing partnerships in Turkey; we have got manufacturing
partnerships in the Czech Republic as well as in Poland. I think
partnering is clearly a way forward. We are surely not going to
try to bake the birthday cake, put the icing on and deliver candles
all from the United States to anywhere; but partnering with somebody
in-country to deliver high quality, high dispatch reliability
products is clearly the way forward.
Mrs Moon: Does the Strategy place sufficient
emphasis on competition?
Q58 Chairman: That is the other side
of the question.
Mr Sharples: Eurocopter has taken
the decision to invest in the UK to support the current fleet
in service, but also to exploit the opportunities that the Defence
Industrial Strategy brings for us; but, to do so, competition
is absolutely critical. The market must be open to us to allow
us to compete against the incumbent manufacturers. By doing so,
I genuinely believe that Her Majesty's Government and the Ministry
of Defence will obtain the benefits of technology investment,
transfer of intellectual property, generation of employment, investment
in new skills, overall best value for money. The more that the
Defence Industrial Strategy opens the market and concentrates
on competition, the better I think it will be for the Ministry
of Defence, for the Armed Forces and for the UK taxpayer.
Q59 Mrs Moon: Does that imply that
you do not think it has opened up to competition enough yet?
Mr Sharples: I think we would
be happy to be invited to have every opportunity to bid whenever
those opportunities are available.
Mr Pitchforth: The first version
of the Defence Industrial Strategy focussed mainly on maintaining
and preserving the skills in-country and/or growing those skills
as we have done with Boeing. We have done that with our partners
at Vector Aerospace in Fleetland in our depth line, increased
the knowledge, capability and skills in-country. I think there
is another version of the Strategy which is imminent, I guess,
and we would be interested to know what that says about some of
these other points that would need addressing.
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