The first two went down because of bad weather, he said.
That`s the same as saying a car crashed into a tree on the side of the road! It was an operational procedure that led the aircraft into the bad weather.
The Bell 212 is suspected to have gone down due to a mechanical malfunction of the tail rotor.
There has been no further information released concerning this "malfunction". I still maintain that the aircraft was not put into auto-rotation, as evidenced by the state of one of the main rotor blades.
"We have travelled on these old helicopters since we were young. They have only been repaired when needed. Our country does not have a big [military] budget," he said.
Either misquoted, or the crux of the whole maintenance program! Every component on a Helicopter has a stipulated time "life". Some components have only a relatively short "life" of several hundred hours, to other components that have several thousand hours "life". There may be components on more modern aircraft that are "on condition", but these components are not likely to be part of the "dynamic" systems.
As for the heavy-lift Boeing CH-47 Chinook, the army bought six of them in 1991. Today, only one is airworthy. Three were grounded because the army did not have enough money to buy spares.
two have been cannibalised _ their parts used as spares for other machines _ and are no longer airworthy.
A very strange way to run a maintenance program on anything, never mind a helicopter! The same components on each aircraft have the same "life" times, so it is very limited to just what components can be "cannibalised".
The army has 52 Bell 212 helicopters, but only 20 can fly. The army tried to get some of the Bell 212s fixed in 2006. It contracted the Thai Aviation Industry (the now-defunct TAI) to repair 16 of them for 1 billion baht. The choppers have remained grounded since repairs.
In 2008, when Gen Anupong Paochinda was army commander, the army set a budget of 990 million baht to fix 15 Bell 212s. That maintenance budget, however, was shifted to buying three Russian-made Mi-17V5 at the cost of 316 million baht each. The Bells thus remained unfixed
.
This is the type of thinking that leads to problems. I have no experience with the Russian equipment and this particular model is used in many countries, and they are 1970`s technology. But those countries do not have a big grounded fleet of some of the best helicopters in the world. When you introduce a completely new type of machine into service the capital cost is going to be the least of the equation. The spare parts inventory, tools, training and lack of experience with the type is going to doom it from the start. Just wonder how long it will be before they start to "cannibalise" one of these?
Another source said Gen Prayuth has ordered the aviation centre to conduct an inventory of all helicopters and draft a plan on what to discard and what to refurbish and at what cost.
This information should be updated and on his desk every morning, so that he can read it before he goes to play golf.
Pete 
