Babcock has set up a new national air operations cell at its Regional Support Centre in Adelaide to assist with its forward planning and daily operations. The new cell supports Babcock’s 12 bases and can track its fleet of 26 helicopters in real time which provide emergency services, search and rescue, law enforcement, surveillance and
Back in 2001, Australia opted to buy the Eurocopter Tiger instead of the US Apache but now Boeing is pitching the latest generation Apache, the AH-64E, as a potential Tiger replacement. Should Australia head down that path, it would tick many boxes – it would be a FMS purchase with aircraft produced in the same
Airbus Group Australia Pacific chief executive Tony Fraser says the Tiger Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) has a bright future amid improved reliability and serviceability rates. The Australian Army’s fleet of 22 Tiger ARH helicopters was the subject of a critical audit published in September 2016, which highlighted the program’s lower than expected serviceability rates and
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has issued Australian type certification to Bell Helicopter for its new five-seat single turbine 505 Jet Ranger X. “We are excited that the Bell 505 Jet Ranger X can now be delivered to operators in Australia,” said Bell Helicopter’s Asia Pacific managing director Sameer A Rehman. “The Bell 505 will fundamentally
The Department of Defence has awarded Austria’s Schiebel Group a contract to supply its Camcopter S-100 to meet the Royal Australian Navy’s interim vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial system (UAS) requirement. Signed in late December, the contract fulfils a request for tender (RFT) for Navy Minor Project (NMP) 1942 which sought to procure a
Airbus Helicopters recorded an increase in new helicopter deliveries during 2016 despite its chief executive Guillaume Faury describing the year as “probably the most difficult of the last decade”. With the continuing stagnation of the offshore sector and the fallout from April’s fatal accident in Norway which resulted in a world-wide grounding of the H225