Airbus Helicopters has delivered the first five-bladed H145 to Milestone Aviation and Al-Sharqiya Aviation, which will operate the helicopter in the Sultanate of Oman for Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) missions.
It is the first five-bladed H145 in the Middle East region. With the new helicopter, Al Sharqiya Aviation will further expand its service offering providing reliable onshore and offshore passenger transport and Emergency Medical Services throughout the Sultanate of Oman.
“Al Sharqiya Aviation is very proud to be the first operator of the five-bladed H145 variant in the Middle East. The on-time arrival of the helicopter was critical to deliver for our customers and we thank Airbus and Milestone for their support,” said Tariq al Barwani, CEO of Al Sharqiya Aviation.
“We are extremely grateful for the confidence that ASA has in the Milestone team, and for the hard work by the Airbus team to ensure the timely delivery of the aircraft. We wish ASA all the success with this brand new five-bladed H145 and look forward to continuing to work closely with them in the future,” said Claire Brugirard, Vice President Commercial Africa & Middle East at Milestone.
“We’re honoured that the H145 will enter into service for HEMS missions in Oman soon”, said Axel Humpert, Head of the H145 programme at Airbus Helicopters. “Especially the excellent hot and high performance and the increased useful load the new five-bladed version offers make it the perfect choice for those missions in the Middle East.”
The new version of Airbus’ best-selling H145 light twin-engine helicopter was unveiled at Heli-Expo 2019 in Atlanta in March. This latest upgrade adds a new, innovative five-bladed rotor to the multi-mission H145, increasing the useful load of the helicopter by 150 kg.
The simplicity of the new bearingless main rotor design will also ease maintenance operations, further improving the benchmark serviceability and reliability of the H145, while improving ride comfort for both passengers and crew. The helicopter’s high-mounted tail boom and wide opening clamshell doors facilitate access to the H145’s spacious cabin.
Today, Airbus has more than 1,515 H145 Family helicopters in service around the world, logging a total of more than six million flight hours.
For EMS alone, there are more than 470 helicopters of the H145 family conducting air rescue missions worldwide.
