Leonardo Helicopters announced this morning that it will fly its latest AW09 single-turbine-engine prototype, PS4, with Safran power. The helicopter will fly shortly with the 1,000-shp-class Safran Helicopter Engines Arriel 2K to guarantee “the most efficient level of industrialization, global supply, and supportability for customers,” according to the Italian airframer. Up until now, AW09 (née Kopter SH09) prototypes have flown with the Honeywell HTS900 engine.
According to Leonardo, the change “will provide innovative, simplified, and competitive maintenance solutions and cost of operations, sustained by tailored service plans and support-by-the-hour contracts as well as a large range of digital services.” Safran has produced 15,000 Arriel series engines that power a variety of helicopters, including the Airbus Helicopters AStar family, Leonardo AW109, and several Sikorsky S-76 models.
The Arriel 2K engine is installed in PS4, which will begin flight tests at Kopter’s Mollis, Switzerland facility soon. PS4 includes all developments implemented and tested on the previous AW09 prototype—P3. PS5, the next and final prototype, will fly later this year. Program progress in 2022 includes integration of the engine, flying the latest and final design main rotor blades, and agreeing on the type certification basis with EASA.
The Mollis facility will continue with the development and test of the AW09 while also serving as Leonardo's technology incubator for aircraft hybridization and electrification.
According to the NTSB’s preliminary report released today, it was below freezing and snow was falling when an Embraer Phenom 300 crashed while taking off from Utah's Provo Municipal Airport at 11:35 a.m. on January 2. The pilot was killed and the three passengers were injured.
A witness said he watched the airplane be towed from a hangar and then fueled. He estimated that the pilot started the engines about 11:10 or 11:15 a.m., “around the same time light snow began to fall.” According to the fueler, the pilot mentioned that “they were trying to get out before the weather.” The fueler added that while he was fueling, he remembered seeing unfrozen water droplets on the wings. At the time of the accident, the temperature/dewpoint were matched at -1 degrees C and snowfall was light to medium intensity.
The fueler said that as the airplane was on its takeoff roll on Runway 13, it appeared to “pull up steep,” roll to the left, and the left wing hit the ground. Additional witnesses at the airport saw the airplane take off, climb to about 20 to 30 feet agl, then both wings wobbled “back and forth.” The airplane banked right, and then “hard left” as the left wing struck the ground, where it scraped along for about 100 feet before the airframe hit the ground.
The FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center is conducting research that could lead to improved GPS integrity allowing further development of low-cost vertically guided instrument approaches.
The current integrity system for lateral guidance only is receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) and it doesn’t depend on ground stations or other infrastructure. “RAIM allows aviation receivers to detect a GPS satellite fault and in many cases isolate the offending satellite and remove it from usage by the receiver,” according to the FAA. For vertical guidance integrity, the FAA’s wide-area augmentation system (WAAS) uses ground stations to ensure accuracy of the GPS signals.
Advanced RAIM (ARAIM) simplifies the vertical integrity aspect by eliminating the need for WAAS ground stations, instead using another civilian global navigation satellite system (GNSS) such as Europe’s Galileo to help improve accuracy. ARAIM does this by using the second GNSS to allow the GPS receiver to directly measure ionospheric error, according to the FAA. “The ionosphere is in most cases the largest source of error in a GNSS signal, and the ionosphere can also reduce the integrity of GNSS signals.”
The goal of ARAIM is to allow LPV-200 approaches (200-foot minimums) anywhere in the world, the FAA explained. ARAIM thus would become an aircraft-based augmentation system, vastly increasing the utility of GNSS-based approaches.
The U.S. House yesterday overwhelmingly approved a bill calling for an FAA task force to determine what improvements need to be made to the notam system. Approval of the Notam Improvement Act of 2023 (H.R.346) came two weeks after the notam system suffered a failure forcing the temporary grounding of IFR operations.
House action was the third approval for the measure; similar legislation had also passed with bipartisan support in the 116th and 117th Congress. Introduced by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minnesota), H.R.346 also included updates to ensure the task force also considers the stability, resiliency, and cybersecurity of the notam system. The measure passed by a 424 to 4 vote.
“Failures of the notam system earlier this month stressed the need to upgrade the program to ensure the safety of pilots, their crews, and passengers,” said Stauber. “I’ve heard from many pilots over the years about the vulnerabilities of the notam system and my bill has previously passed the House twice. It’s now time for the Senate to act and pass this important legislation before another failure of the notam system occurs.”
Business aviation groups including NBAA are praising the FAA’s decision to extend the comment period on its recent notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would require charter operators, air tours, and manufacturers to implement safety management systems (SMS). The extended comment period now runs to April 12, a month later than the original March 13 deadline.
The NPRM would update and expand FAR Part 5 SMS requirements beyond Part 121 commercial airlines to certain Part 21 certificate holders (namely aircraft OEMs), Part 135 air charter operations, and companies holding a letter of authorization to conduct air tour operations under FAR 91.147. SMS has been mandated for U.S. airlines since 2018 and Congress has been pressuring the FAA to extend the requirement to other commercial aviation operations.
“We thank the FAA for granting our request for this extension as NBAA and other stakeholders continue to review the NPRM,” said Doug Carr, NBAA's senior v-p for safety, security, sustainability, and international operations. “However, we must ensure that any rulemaking permits scalability to the specific size and needs of every affected flight operation.”
Carr emphasized NBAA’s support for SMS but specifically noted the burdens full-scale SMS would place on single-pilot Part 135 operators. He said SMS rulemaking should be “rolled out responsibly and in full consideration of the varied nature of many business aviation operations.”
Airbus Helicopters said it maintained its 52 percent share of the civil and parapublic helicopter market in 2022 with 374 orders and 344 deliveries. Customer fleet hours, meanwhile, returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels.
Demand for the company’s turbine singles and light twins again led the way, collectively accounting for 342 orders, while demand for Airbus’s super-medium and intermediate helicopters, the H175 and H160, remained weak, with just eight and 12 orders, respectively.
“Our orders came from 203 customers in 48 countries, underlining the importance of our global network, as well as showing that in uncertain times, the role of helicopters is more essential than ever,” said Airbus Helicopters CEO Bruno Even. He said 2022 “was a year in which Airbus Helicopters solidified its recovery, in a context of instability with the war in Ukraine and a fragile supply chain.”
Even said Airbus is pursuing a three-pronged campaign for decarbonization that includes SAF, hybridization, and electrification. ”The unveiling of our DisruptiveLab demonstrator at the Airbus Summit is another significant step to decarbonizing vertical lift. The aircraft that took flight on January 13 will demonstrate our capability to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent. Our commitment to sustainability also saw us forge more partnerships that will support the optimal entry into service of the CityAirbus NextGen, our eVTOL prototype.”
The FAA recently released a 77-page report from a government/industry group recommending that the agency adopt an alertness management program (AMP) concept for Part 135 operations to protect against pilot fatigue. While made public this month, the report containing the recommendations of the Part 135 Pilot Duty and Rest Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) was submitted to the FAA in July 2021.
Under the ARC concept, an AMP would provide for fatigue monitoring and mitigations to enable an operator to increase duty times and/or reduce rest times. The complexity of the program would depend on the type of operation, the ARC noted, but it said that for AMPs to be effective they must be comprehensive and enforceable. For operators choosing not to adopt an AMP, the ARC recommended strengthened limits that are “deliberately more restrictive to avoid the potential for unmitigated fatigue."
That proposal referenced the report and said that as part of a safety management program “the identification of hazards through SMS may include analyzing the potential risk associated with crewmember fatigue when compounded by variations in individual [Part] 135 operations.”
Bell Textron’s military helicopter deliveries declined as key programs wound down in 2022, but civil deliveries surged, largely on the popularity of the Bell 505 light single. Overall revenues dropped 4.9 percent from 2021, to $3.1 billion, while the segment reported a profit of $282 million. Bell said it expects modest growth in 2023 revenues to about $3.3 billion with comparable profitability. Bell finished 2022 with a backlog of $4.8 billion.
Last year, Bell delivered 31 military aircraft, down from 48 in 2021. The mix included 15 H-1s, 13 V-22s, and three Huey IIs. On the civil side, Bell delivered 176 helicopters, up from 156 in 2021. The totals included 83 Model 505s and 49 Model 407 singles, as well as 32 light-twin 429s. Deliveries of 505s posted the largest gain, increasing from 63 in 2021. For the period, deliveries of Bell 412s more than doubled from seven to 15.
On a conference call with analysts yesterday, Textron CEO Scott Donnelly said Bell will realize revenues of $1.3 billion over 19 months from the initial flyer contract related to the company’s recent V-280 tiltrotor win of the Army’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft contract.
Daher’s Kodiak 900, the new version of its Kodiak single-engine utility turboprop, adds more high-end features along with a fuselage that is 3.9 feet longer and aerodynamic improvements that give it up to 36 knots more speed at cruise versus the original Kodiak 100. AIN editor-in-chief Matt Thurber put the second 900 ever built through its paces during a recent flight with Mark Brown, Daher Kodiak's chief demo pilot and marketing director.
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