Mark Huber is an aviation industry veteran who has worked in the flight training, aircraft sales, aircraft component, and airport development businesses. He has flight time in more than 50 different and diverse aircraft, including helicopters, aerobatic aircraft, vintage warbirds, jet fighters, business jets and turboprops, and transport-category aircraft. He has jumped out of several of these—on purpose—with a parachute. His defense and aviation journalism has been published in a variety of national and international periodicals.

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Mark Huber

Airbus Helicopters (Booth 9651) reported improved 2015 revenues of 6.8 billion in 2015, up from 6.5 billion in 2014. Revenues were equally derived from civil and military sales, with 53 percent coming from aircraft sales and 47 percent from services. Airbus Helicopters delivers 55 percent of its product into Europe, 25 percent into Asia and the Pacific and 20 percent into the Americas. It continues to dominate the global civil market with 45 percent market share.

 


Civil deliveries were down in 2015 to 395 (84 in North America) from 471in 2014. Airbus Helicopters CEO Guillame Faury attributed this mainly to a deterioration of the light helicopter market. Likewise bookings during the year dropped to 383 from 402 in 2014, with big year-over-year drops in the heavy sector H225, which garnered only two orders in 2015 compared to 32 in 2014, and lesser declines among light singles, down to 163 from 176, and the medium H145, declining to 107 from 115. The new H175 super-medium twin posted a sharp gain in orders, growing from 8 in 2014 to 36 in 2015, but Faury said he expects that number to fall off to between 15 and 20 for 2016. While a fleet of six H175s are performing very well for North Sea OGP operator NHV, achieving an availability rate of 95 percent, Faury characterized offshore demand for the H175 as soft, and he said new variants would be introduced in 2016 including VIP and SAR. Airbus Helicopters has released its H175 Flight Crew Operating Manual (FCOM) for the H175 in offshore configuration, including operational guidance for the latest generation Helionix avionics systems.

 


The first of two H215s was delivered today to the Finnish Boarder Guard fleet. The H215 features the four-axis autopilot for the H225. The company is particularly optimistic about its ability to attract firefighting contracts. Although the heavy helicopter market is currently depressed, Faury said Airbus Helicopters is continuing to work on its new generation X6 eventual replacement for the H225.

 


Airbus Helicopters announced several orders here at Heli-Expo, including an H125 from the Utah Highway Patrol, an H135 from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team (DHART) air medical in Northern New England, and an H130 from Lightnin’ Production Rentals, a movie and television production rental company based in Atlanta.

 


Product Support and Maintenance

 


Faury said Airbus Helicopters continues to make progress on its product support initiatives, noting that its HCare has achieved 100 percent on-time delivery for planned spare parts and has increased the remainder of on time deliveries from 83 percent to 95 percent.

 


Airbus Helicopters is set to certify the first comprehensive health usage and monitoring system (HUMS) and helicopter flight data monitoring (HFDM) system&nbsp;to monitor dynamic components on light and medium helicopters later this year. The system was developed in collaboration with Ultra Electronics-Flightline Systems, of Victor, N.Y., and was tested over a period of several months in 2015 on an EC145 main gearbox. The system weighs just seven pounds and collected highly accurate data, detecting very small faults, according to Airbus Helicopters.

 


Certification will initially be sought to install HUMS on the EC145 (BK117 C2) family of helicopters including the UH-72A Lakota variant operated by the U.S. Army, followed by the H125/AS350 AStar series. Once certified for each helicopter model the system will be available for retrofits. Implementation of the HUMS and flight data monitoring systems will allow air medical service operators to become compliant with the FAA’s EMS flight data monitoring requirements.

 


“Development of HUMS for light helicopters will allow the industry to move to condition-based maintenance, maximizing aircraft availability and reducing costs due to unexpected downtime and better spares usage. It will also be a factor in improving safety,” said Chris Emerson, president of Airbus Helicopters Inc. Airbus Helicopters will tailor its customer support and service offerings to reflect the data it receives from helicopter operations, including component support and MRO programs, to provide operators with proactive and predictive support. The data also will allow Airbus Helicopters to improve spares support by predicting usage.

 


Airbus Helicopters also has acquired a dedicated and fully functional Bo105 dedicated solely to maintenance training at its Grand Prairie, Texas facility.

 


Airbus Helicopters continues to offer its inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions training in its AS350 level B full motion flight and mission training simulator in Grand Prairie. The course is non-airframe specific.

 


Customer support team members from Airbus Helicopters will be at Heli-Expo to meet with customers and update them on key service support and support issues and tools. Mike Muniz, director of customer support, and John Byus, sales manager for HCare, will be on hand during the show to discuss the support and services options offered under the Airbus Helicopters HCare programs. ECommerce trainer Darren Huski will be onsite to demonstrate the latest revisions to Keycopter, the Airbus Helicopters online system for ordering spare parts, warranty updates, and viewing online technical publications. Customers can also view a demonstration of the new technical request management tool on the Keycopter platform. The tool can be used to initiate and track all technical questions and answers related to Airbus products.

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