When people fork out serious $'s for a gyro they are naturally distressed to have their machines grounded!.
Customer service, in-house information & honest disclosure with judicious return-to-service of the fleet ...are important !
When a precautionary grounding order is placed on a fleet (or sub-set of a fleet) ...due to an accident ....that will take many many months to have reports published ....a manufacturer who has access to a lot more information than can be publicly discussed after the initial investigation & before the final report is published...can take the option of redesigning a component and essentially create a "new model" ...(this of course contingent on engineer tested assessment of the new component) - DONE!
As 500e ... correctly called YOU OUT ...on YOUR unfair statement ...TAG Aviation DID not implicate their original design was faulty or culpable (in redesigning the mast plates) - just giving customers an option to return their gyro to flight status ...sooner than much much later ...awaiting an ASRA lifting of the grounding order - specific to originally equipped gyro's).....& in light of the
ATSB (NOT to be confused with ASRA) metallurgy report ...feel justified that that the original design WAS PROVEN ADEQUATE!
HAD the WA gyro owner installed the NEW plates & the accident proceeded as it did ...no question the company would be in DEEP
!
With the computer-modeling available these days ... it would be interesting to run some simulations!
I don't know how you think ANY rotorcraft mast system can be designed to withstand the MASSIVE out-of-balance forces PROVEN over & over to trash the craft in seconds ...when weight is unevenly added( Ice) or subtracted( loss of a balance component - or piece of rotor)!
SO ...we await the ASRA reports -& wait & wait & wait! ......for full disclosure of ALL the factors culminating in these tragedies!
Meantime ... the "REAL POSSIBILITY" of a suspected rotor balance weight departure from the rotor in flight( in the WA accident) has grounded most of the fleet world-wide ...while a solution is being engineered to refit those rotors back to original specs (with leadshot-in-resin...along the leading edge!)
The culpable party in the rotor fiasco ...is the separate entity that produces ONLY the ROTOR ....AND ...ignored a specific direction from the TAG manufacturer ...when requesting a change of weighting material being laid up in the leading edge!
Everyone is working together ...doing their best to fix an engineering mistake (fortuitously discovered after the WA accident & time will tell IF it had a significant role in the accident "swiss-cheese" stack!) ...and getting TAG owners, CFI's, musterers & sport fliers back to work & play - SAFELY & ASAP!