Original Message

Happened in Colorado.  While the winds were indeed high, they were not "VNE".  It's all about turbulence.

When I first qualified on AS350s/355s (1987), cracks in the Starflex weren't uncommon. If one noted a "crack" on preflight, you checked crack length and location with maintenance to ensure airworthiness and I would mark the end of the crack with a pencil line and check every postflight for propagation, lengthening of the crack. If the crack lengthened, it was no longer flyable.

We were told that that the rie-down socks were not sufficient to protect the Starflex, were issued rigid braces for the blade socks, which limited, somewhat, the 'bounce' at the blade tip. I was always uncomfortable with those, as 50, 60 knot winds were not uncommon in the Gulf of Mexico and the blades would unload and the brace struts move on the deck, adding additional stress to the blades themselves.

I don't know what was changed, material or design, but I haven't seen similar cracks in years, decades.