I was the Chief Pilot and one of the Pilots at the controls of the Westland that crashed in Long Beach. A lot of fun to fly but it did have some major problems. We really had a great bunch of Pilots flying the Westland 30

I worked w30s for airspur at LAX as a mechanic. I started after the crash in Long beach, it was my first A&P job. Those Gem 60s did not like california weather. We swapped them out often. Must have been at least part of reason the company failed.

garbage material which is of no use

westland 30 helicopter is made of waste material of expired helicopter. this must not ment for indian climate

It was not a good helicopter and it must be thrown in garbage

i worked under wetland 30 helicopter in technical works i flew this helicopter but it was not up to the mark. It requires lot of modification and wastage of time.

Yes Joeseph it is a shame N114wg is sitting at the helicopter mueseum in england completley stripped to the hull and they use it for kids to play on at least they could do a mock up of it in pan am livery and put it on display what a shame !!

Hello Being that this airframe was cancelled in 1990 i cannot imagine that there is many spare parts for this machine from westland agusta that being said it would be pointless to put them in operation again unless you had and agreement with a tooling company to start making parts again it really is a beautiful machine with much headroom for passengers and by todays standards still very fast and with an efis cockpit could be very modern.

I flew the W30 back in the eighties on the Onmiflight Pan Am contract. With almost 1200 hours in the aircraft I can say I knew them well. It is really sad to see how they ended up. Shame that at least one of the Pan Am ships didn't end up in a museum. I know that one is in a museum in the UK but that just breaks my heart what they have done to it.

During the short, sad life of the WG-30 in the USA I worked for Westland, Inc., first in Newport Beach California in support of AirSpur, and then in Herndon & Arlington, Virgina as PanAm /OmniFlight & then other potential operators such as Midway began to start up operations. As an A&P I worked in technical and spares support.

There was a fundamenal design problem with the power train system that manifested itself by the tail rotor 90-degree gearbox essentially beating itself to the point of catastrophic failure, which was the cause of the LA crash and an event nothing short of a miracle given that no one was killed or seriously injured. All anti-torque was lost and the aircraft went through high power transmission lines before impacting the ground. Certainly the fuselange is /was robust. Nice piloting as well, as the power lines were obscured until the last moment by ground fog.

This problem, and others related to the main rotor blades, were known in Westland-Yeovil management and engineering circles prior to the crash, but not widely discussed, and certainly not with the staff in the US. Despite this knowledge by Westland, no notification was given to the operators or airworthiness authorities. In fact, immediate and successful measures were taken in the US offices to remove all relevant intra-company correspondence from the USA offices and ship it to the UK before the FAA arrived. Had this not been done the company would most likely have been ruined consequent to exposure to US product liability /tort law. Because removal of these records was likely a criminal act as well, had such an action become known at the time the Agusta-Westland "US-101" (the 'maybe' presidential helicopter) would certainly have had some difficulty "getting off the ground" in the USA.

As a stop-gap measure BIM indicators, customarily used on main rotor blades, were introduced to the oil filler cap of the 90-degree gearbox and the boxes were charged with nitrogen. The BIM indicators did their job, and number of boxes were subsequently changed, however the basic design problem remained for these aircraft. I left the company after all US helicopter operations ceased and the remaining Westland-owned US airframes "rescued" from Evergreen Air Center in Marana, Arizona (another interesting, and this time amusing, story). I am unaware if the design problem was cured on existing or subsequent builds.

I flew for Airspur and it was an exciting job. The helo had many teething problems and even an inflight tailrotor failure and subsequent crash near Long Beach Airport in November 1983. I was happy to move on but still remember the hectic days flying for Airspur.

what a beautiful machine.why do we allow such a machine to lie idle for such a time. Pls let us get it flying again

I was in A&P school and worked part time for Airspur in the summer of 1984. They crashed one. All survived. Had a major structure failure on another. Westland came out with Engineers and fixtures to repair. They also changed Rotor Blades often due to finding cracks. They closed that year. I heard that the UK could or would not finance a US Operater.
Working for Airspur at LAX was a short but memorable experience and I am still working on helicopters.

Yes I agree with Vikram Kaul my ex-colleague I was also in love with the helicopter but now I am happy to work on its successor the AW 139 which has become a hot selling machine worldwide

Dear Sir,

We are interested in leasing of this kind of Helicopter.
Can you send us your last price for lease this Helicopter.
Appreciating your cooperation.

A beautiful helicopter which was a bit ahead of its time. I got my initial ame licence on this helicopter and was very disappointed when politics finished this helicopter.

i love this page.

Phil Vickery mentioned thathe had a line on 14 W30-100 aircraft...do you have photos of any of these aircraft?

Gus Jacob and any other similarly interested,

I have a line on sale of W30-100 's - 14 to be precise. Pleas contact me for details.
Regards
Phil Vickery

I have all the technical details on this helicopter with graphs and diagrams

Regards

Bob Maxwell