Avia Blog

Bell Helicopter chief executive John Garrison and Mitsui Bussan Aerospace chief executive Yukihiro Tanaka shake on a deal for four Bell 429s and three 412s….

Everyone may share the friendly skies, but whether you are escorting a diplomat, airlifting a patient or keeping an eye on the traffic for a television channel, everyone has a different objective when the rotors begin their beat.

With all those competing interests, communication and co-operation is essential. That is why the Western Pennsylvania Helicopter Safety Summit, a gathering held every four months, was created.

STAT Medevac, a helicopter emergency medical service operator based outside Pittsburgh, hosted the latest event on 21 January, near its home base on Allegheny County airport.

It has been an uneventful winter in the region in terms of dangerous incidents, but between top staffers from several HEMS operators, the Pennsylvania State Police, two US Federal Aviation Administration representatives and electronic news-gathering helicopter pilots from three television channels, there was plenty to say, and all of it highlighted the necessity of co-opera

Sikorsky has named suppliers for its 250kt (460km/h) X2 Technology coaxial-rotor helicopter demonstrator as the Bell/Agusta BA609 civil tiltrotor moves closer to achieving its 275kt cruise speed.

The first six/nine-seat BA609 reached 125kt on 13 June, when its landing gear was retracted and the proprotor nacelles lowered to 60° for the first time. The nacelles are scheduled to be lowered to 0° (horizontal) later this month, in the first transition from helicopter to aeroplane mode.

Honeywell is to supply the fibre-by-wire flight control system for the two-seat X2 demonstrator, which will be built by Sikorsky subsidiary Schweizer Aircraft and is scheduled to fly by the end of next year.

The X2 will have counter-rotating four-blade rigid main rotors with low-drag hubs, says senior vice-president Jeff Pino. The tail-mounted six-blade propulsor will be produced by by Aero Composites.

Bell Helicopter, meanwhile, will flight-test an advanced helicopter roto

Bell Helicopter’s candidate for the US Army’s 368-aircraft armed reconnaissancehelicopter (ARH) requirement has made its debut flight from the US company’s XworX research centre in Arlington, Texas. The modified Bell 407 demonstrator conducted its first three flights from the facility on 3 June.

Helicopter manufacturers are in-creasingly confident that hurdles to rotorcraft being used in business aviation have been cleared in Europe, which could pave the way to increased sales within the region.

Representatives from AgustaWestland, Bell Helicopter and Eurocopter, speaking at last month’s European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition in Geneva, said issues with noise, all-weather capability and safety concerns have been largely overcome and they expect greater use of VIP-configured helicopters for flights in western Europe.

Dominique Olbec, vice-president of marketing for Eurocopter, says: “Using business jets gives a great productivity gain, but that is lost if you get stuck in traffic, so a helicopter will become a complement to business jets, not a replacement.” Helicopters suffered from an image problem in the 1980s and 1990s following some high-profile fatal accidents involving musicians including Stevie Ray Vaughan, but improvements to

Has Bell’s rebuild of the AH-1 to the Z standard given it the combat potency to rival other modern attack helicopters? We fly it to find out.

The Belgian army plans to replace its 32 Aerospatiale Alouette II light helicopters from 2004 with 15-19 new machines and is also searching for a medium to heavylift transport helicopter.

The army uses 27 Alouette IIs for liaison and the rest for training. They have been in service since 1960 and their age is causing maintenance problems.

The new small type will take over observation, reconnaissance and liaison roles from the army’s principal helicopter, the Agusta A109BA. A smaller, lighter helicopter will be cheaper to operate.

Belgium’s need for a rotary wing transport has been demonstrated during the deployment of its army as part of the NATO operation in Kosovo, where road transport has proved time-consuming and in many cases impractical.

The Belgian army sees a need for at least eight heavy transport helicopters to allow the rapid deployment of an infantry company or an anti-tank platoon around a battlefield. Although it declines to name pot

Early-summer haze hangs over a little-known airfield in the English midlands. In the midday stillness a small gathering waits, gazes and fixes lenses intently on a white Boeing 747 about 400m (1,300ft) away across the grass. Suddenly, the aircraft shudders and, just as the soundwave from the destructive explosion reaches the crowd, the massive fuselage bursts open, ejecting debris, then crumples and sags. Silence falls as the dust descends around the broken hull.

The surreal aura is enhanced when a scientist declares the experiment a success. It is the climax of a research programme to enable aircraft to survive terrorist bombs, and this scene of devastation is, he says, what his research team had been expecting. Meanwhile, there is a car parked near the airfield gathering, and stickers in its windows pronounce: “Lockerbie. Let the truth be known.”

If technology tested on that May day had been applied to the Pan American Boeing 747 blown up by a terrorist bomb over L