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

Get ready for a wild ride. Visitors to the Leonardo Helicopters booth (3017) here at Heli-Expo will be able to experience the thrill of being snatched from the churning seas and winched aboard a search-and-rescue (SAR) helicopter–through the magic of virtual reality goggles. This is just part of the customer experience at the company's booth this year. Leonardo is stressing how its product line, from the AW119Kx single to the AW189 super-medium twin, fulfill diverse emergency medical and SAR requirements.


Leonardo is emphasizing both continuous product upgrades and performance improvements of legacy and newer products as well as its ongoing certification programs. The AW119Kx single, for example, will soon be certified for operations at 24,000 ft pressure altitude and 25,000 ft density altitude, a capability that will add to its utility in mountainous regions, including China, said Stefano Bortoli, Leonardo Helicopters senior vice president for sales and marketing.


The 10,140-lb AW169 medium twin is adding to its certified and STCd&nbsp; list of kits, especially for EMS. The AW169's 2016 EASA certification was validated by the FAA in February, and U.S deliveries are scheduled to begin later this year. To date, the company has orders and options for 150 AW169s, and more than 20 have been delivered to customers around the world for applications that include emergency medical service, executive/private transport, utility, offshore transport and wind farm support. All AW169s are being delivered from Leonardo’s plant in Vergiate, Italy. A planned second AW169 assembly line at the company's Philadelphia facility, which was slated to open late last year, is indefinitely on hold.


Meanwhile more than 30 of the larger AW189 super-medium twins have been delivered, and the highest-time ship, operated by Bel Air of Denmark in the North Sea, had exceeded 6,000 hours as of January. The Bel Air AW189s are equipped with the limited ice protection system (LIPS) and the 8.6-ton maximum gross weight upgrade. LIPS allows operations within a known and defined envelope of icing conditions provided that the capability to descend into a known band of positive temperature is available along the intended route.


Leonardo currently has agreements for more than 150 AW189s. The AW189 has the capacity to carry up to 19 passengers and features an optional full ice protection system (FIPS) and a 50-minute run-dry gearbox.


The AW139 medium twin continues to be Leonardo's star performer, with more than 800 delivered and an order book approaching 1,000. The fleet has amassed 1.5 million flight hours and is operated in 71 countries worldwide.


The big dog in Leonardo's development hangar continues to be the AW609 civil tiltrotor. The third AW609 (AC3) test aircraft recently began flight testing from the company's Philadelphia plant. Icing trials in Marquette, Michigan are the next item on the agenda. Bortoli said the AW609 program remains aggressively resourced. "It is consuming a significant amount of engineering resources, significantly in Philadelphia," he said.


Certification is expected later this year for both the Trekker light twin and the AW009 light single, Bortoli said. The Trekker is basically an AW109S Grand on skid gear and with advanced single-pilot-IFR Genesys avionics, but costs less. The AW009 is a reworked PZL Swidnik SW-4, also now with Genesys avionics, with a Rolls-Royce M250-C30P engine.&nbsp;

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