The Army Chief Reveals the High Cost of Maintaining the Taipan Fleet: 40 Hours of Maintenance for 1 Hour of Flight Time
The Taipan fleet has a history of technical issues and was grounded in multiple instances.
Australia is projected to incur significant savings on the cost of maintaining the now-shuttered MRH-90 Taipan helicopter with their replacements, the UH-60 Black Hawks, with officials revealing the cost to be about one-fifth of their predecessors.
Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, told a Senate Estimates hearing that the new Black Hawk helicopters cost up to $12,000 every flight hour, compared to the $58,000 per flight hour for the Taipans.
The U.S.-made aircraft also require a fraction of the maintenance time.
“We’ve flown about just around 200 hours on our Black Hawks. We’re sitting at about five, six maintenance man hours,” Major General Jeremy King told the Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Senate Estimates Committee.
It was noted that given they are brand new, they would require less maintenance at this stage.
This is compared to the European-made Taipans which required 40 hours of manned maintenance for every hour of flight time based on historical averages.