officers discovered one tonne of Ice in one pickup and 1.464 tonnes in the other.
Damn they build those trucks strong !
Out of the factory they're probably rated for about 700kg.
It was not a mistake during maintenance, it was a bearing that failed, last I heard (4 yrs ago) they had not determined why it failed, but others were found during subsequent inspections that were in the process of failing.
I was a Licenced Engineer on a helicopter (AW189) with the same tail rotor control as the AW169.
The reason there was no further accidents, is that after the accident, the engineers were required to carry out detailed inspections every 10 flying hours & to dismantle parts of the tail rotor control to do further detailed checks every 30 flying hours.
The root cause of the failure in the accident was a seized bearing.
During our inspections we sometimes found problems in those bearings & replaced them.
Disclaimer: I have been out of the helicopter buisness for 4 years now & I haven't kept up with developments since then.
Just a bit of added info from a friends experience.
You are given a 5 year re entry ban when they throw you out.
BUT, you have to jump thru a lot of hoops with the Immigration Department to have that ban removed from your record, my friend tried to board a plane to Thailand at the end of the 5 yrs & was refused boarding.
While their numbers are just pie in the sky, I think the idea is very good.
The last time I visited Railay Beach, Krabi it was absolutely mobbed with climbers, spreading them out to new sites across the country seems like a great idea.
No, but it's actually been suprisingly good most days considering the time of year.
Mornings tend to be worst with the cold air holding the smoke down in the valley.
But its getting steadily worse & this is unlikely to change until the rains come.