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

The Airbus Helicopters X6 heavy helicopter program has been cleared to receive $429.8 million in French and German government subsidies by the European Commission under EU state aid rules. Airbus’s twin-engine X6 is the long-awaited successor to its Super Puma.

 


Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner in charge of competition policy, said the support would not cause “undue distortions of competition” and “stimulate considerable private investment in the project.” The French and German subsidies were classified as “repayable advances” to be administered over the course of eight years, with the lion's share—$376 million—coming from France.

 


According to the commission, the subsidies were necessary as the financial scope of the X6 program exceeds Airbus’ capacity to finance it. “The scope of the X6 helicopter project is such that the associated risks are high and the investments required exceed the self-financing capability of Airbus. The financial markets are also reluctant to finance such an ambitious research and development project for which a return on investment is only expected over a long period.”

 


Airbus Group reported revenues of $14.17 billion and an operating profit of $261.7 million in the first quarter of 2017; revenues last year were $76.4 billion and net operating profit was $1.134 billion. Airbus announced the X6 program in 2015 and expects to make initial customer deliveries in 2022 or 2023.

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