Like its predecessors, it would be the most widely recognized helicopter in the world– the personal transport for the world’s most powerful leader, a leader who has traveled by helicopter since the mid-1950s. And a leader who had traveled in the same make and almost the same model of American-made helicopter most of those days. So when the President of the United States decides to shop around for a new short-range ride, the news brings makers of suitably sized rotorcraft running. So far the race for the new Marine One is shaping up as a contest between Sikorsky’s newly certificated S-92 and EH Industries’ US 101 (a U.S. version of the EH 101). While Sikorsky took the field first, staging VIP demonstrations at Quantico, Va., and Davison Army Airfield in mid-May, within days EH Industries began demonstrating its three-engine behemoth to the few, the proud and the brave throughout the U.S.
Sikorsky is pressing home the S-92’s commonality with the well proven and much-liked Black Hawk, low projected per-hour flight costs and Sikorsky’s long-established relationship with HMX-1, the elite Marine squadron that provides top-level U.S. government flights (every Presidential helicopter, save one, has been a Sikorsky product–the exception being a three-seat Bell 47 variant used briefly by President Dwight Eisenhower).
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