Issues with Tulsa’s Police helicopters

I read on David Schuttler’s blog My Tulsa World that both police helicopters were down. He asked, “Do we need a 3rd police helicopter now?”

I knew that the older helicopter was down. Here is a picture of it taken apart.

This ship was carrying the load of two helicopters in the interim period where we had sold the old one and purchased the new one. As such, it had several deferred maintenance items including the 4000 hour inspection and engine rebuild. This is a major maintenance event, requiring substantial down time.

Having one ship down for the 4000 hour event meant that our new helicopter was carrying the load of both ships. The risk that is run when only one ship is operational is that the second ship might go down, and that is what happened.

I spoke with Officer Jason Willingham, and he told me that there some sort of tail rotor issue. For flight safety reasons, they needed to ground it to make sure that it did not turn into a dangerous problem. Bell has inspected the tail rotor drive shaft which turned out not to be the issue. Unfortunately, more inspection is required before they know what actions are needed, but the current plan is to place it back into service on Monday for in-flight diagnostics.



The engine rebuild on older helicopter is complete and is waiting a few final parts that should arrive this Monday. After a few final inspections it should be in the air hopefully with in the next week or two. Once the newer one has the rotor issue resolved and it checks out, we should be in good shape.