Rotorcraft
Airbus Racer on Pace for 2022 First Flight
Airbus Helicopters has moved its Racer demonstrator to its Marignane, France site for assembly as it targets first flight by the end of the year.
Airbus’s Racer compound high-speed rotorcraft will fly about twice as fast as a conventional helicopter.
Airbus’s Racer compound high-speed rotorcraft will fly about twice as fast as a conventional helicopter.

Airbus Helicopters’ Rapid and Cost-Efficient Rotorcraft—better known by its acronym Racer—is progressing steadily and on course to start its flight campaign this year, according to Brice Makinadjian, the company’s chief engineer for the program. “We are moving towards a first flight for the demonstrator in the second half of 2022, more towards the end of the year,” Makinadjian told AIN during a media briefing in Marignane, France, ahead of Heli-Expo 2022.

When announced in 2017, Airbus said Racer would begin flights in 2020. However, the European OEM was forced to revise the timeline of the first flight several times, pointing to a variety of reasons such as program management complexity and the slowdown of several production lines in the supply chain as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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