I live in the Annapolis Valley and watched a Cormorant, or as the boys refer to them as, a Shag, fly over the last couple of days. It does look very impressive and beautiful.
Whatever troubles they may have it will work itself out, always the same with new kit, especially such high tech stuff. They went from a 1964 Boeing Vertol to pretty fancy new stuff, it will take time.
As for the contract with civilian AMEs doing the maintenance we hope to see it work well. Right now there is very serious talk of VFR lifter machines being leased to take the strain off the Sea King for utility work. (They were looking at something along the lines of the Westland Lynx for comparisson)
Looks like they want these beasts in Shearwater within a year with pilot conversion and trained techs soon. They will have to start with AMEs and slowly train our techs to take them to sea. You heard right, I don''t know how the project has gotten because I am away from the office for a while but it was a very serious thing.
Anyone else heard anything out there? Does this thing have legs or is it dying?
From a driver''s perspective, we think yabadabadoo. I would love to take a B407 or AStar B3 or Twinstar or similar to sea and do utility stuff single pilot, yeah baby.