139 Tail Damage

[Tadpole]

Heard an Air Corps 139 has some sort of tail damage.
Does anybody know if its another Agusta tail issue? Doesn't instill confidence only a couple of days after a 139 ditched in Hong Kong.

[RoyalGreenJacket]

does this mean they won't be coming to Farnborough this year?

[GoneToTheCanner]

Hi there,
On a not-unconnected note, I heard that the 139s are suffering from serious cracking in their tailbooms and that even the repairs are cracking! that's what you get when you try to make combatworthy helicopters out of millionaires'playthings.
regards
GttC

[Tadpole]

GTTC,
Your right about the 139 tails. Agusta are now bringing out a metal re-enforced tail, it will be interesting to see where that pushes the stress off to. Funny they had the same prob with the 109 when it came out first.

However it now appears this damage may actually have been a tail strike in a 135. Dont know much else.

[morpheus]

if you mean a 139 had a tailstrike into a 135 then my questio is... with so few aircaft left in the inventory, where did they find a 135 to crash into!? :o

[Tadpole]

Hi Morpheus,
Sorry, miss communication. I meant it was a 135 had the tail strike rather then a 139. Although I believe a second 135 got a nudge since.

[balkanhawk]

Hi all,

Here is a nice pic of that middle eastern 139 with the tail boom failure.



I also heard that one went down in the far east during a display.