No evidence all Sea Kings have problem: military

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Sea Kings grounded (photo: Stephen Puddicombe)
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HALIFAX– The air force hasn't grounded its fleet of Sea Kings, but none of the helicopters are flying unless they really have to, said a military spokesperson on Thursday.

The air force has decided not to fly any of its 28 aging Sea Kings except in emergencies or on essential missions after two of the helicopters had similar losses of power this week.

“We have not grounded the fleet,” said Lt.-Col. Bruce Ploughman of the aircraft maintenance squadron at CFB Shearwater, N.S. “We have stood down from our routine training flights.”

The Sikorsky CH-124 Sea King

Canada bought 41 Sea King helicopters in 1963. They were designed for hunting Soviet submarines during the Cold War. Since then, Sea Kings have been drafted for search-and-rescue missions, cargo and troop transportation and reconnaissance missions. Twenty-eight are still in service.

Over the past 40 years:

12 of the aircraft have crashed;

31 have been damaged, but were repaired;

there have been 27 forced landings;

10 people have died;

111 people have been injured, six severely.

Each of the remaining Sea Kings requires 30 hours of maintenance for one hour of flight.

The federal government is expecting to spend $3 billion to replace the fleet.

An air force news release said there will be a “72-hour operational pause for non-essential flights” of all 28 aircraft while engineers examine the two helicopters.

The investigation has found nothing to suggest the two incidents are linked, or that the fleet has a problem.

In one of the incidents, a Sea King crew on a training mission was hovering and practicing hoisting material, when the power dropped off in one of the aircraft's two engines. The engine continued to run, Ploughman said, but the effect would be similar to the loss of an engine.

Losing an engine makes hovering more difficult, but the crew was able to land safely, he said. Flight crews train extensively on how to deal with losing an engine in flight.

“There is no helicopter out there today, even the most modern, that can fly minus one engine in all regimes of flight,” he said.

The Sea Kings became something of an international embarrassment to Canada this year when HMCS Iroquois had to turn back to port after one crashed onto the deck en route to the Arabian Sea.