Rotortrade HAI 2022 Round Up
Take Away
March 2022 saw the return of Heli-Expo in Dallas, USA. More than 13,000 attendees and almost 600 exhibitors travelled from 72 countries around the world to experience three days of the largest show in the helicopter world representing 90% of the attendance and number of exhibitors from Anaheim 2020.?
Given the recent events in Europe and how parts of the world are still closed from COVID, this shows how strongly the industry has bounced back. Despite the market uncertainty and volatility due to war and looming inflation the industry seems to be taking everything up in its stride forming a general consensus that things are looking up, and not only because of the 100$ barrel.
While lower sales during the pandemic all but stalled production lines, huge military contracts from governments stepping up to ensure minimal job losses combined with an uptick of civil orders have led to very long lead times for new helicopters.?
These long lead times combined with higher then normal annual price increases on most product lines are pushing pre-owned sales up.
Ultimately, industry professionals will have seen several such cycles, and it's safe to say most of us want to ride and fuel this up-cycle!
It was interesting to note that while Urban Air Mobility has already taken a commendable position within our industry with huge capital inflows, we have yet to see UAM take center stage while drones have somehow taken a step back during this HAI. The question of how helicopters and e-VTOLs (and drones) will coexist remains, but no doubt disruptive technologies will continue to shape our industry ever faster then they have in the past.?
Last but not least, it was great to see women taking on more and more leadership roles which will surely help move faster towards more sustainable practices and technologies to sustain our industry's long term future.
Key Events
The biggest announcement of the show was the 43 aircraft The Helicopter Company (THC) ordered from Leonardo and Airbus to establish helicopter emergency medical and passenger transport services in Saudi Arabia.?
THC also announced various initiatives and partnerships in Urban Air Mobility and Sustainability Aviation Fuel. THC, 100% owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Rotortrade (RT) announced a strategic partnership through the purchase by PIF/THC of a 51% stake building on a common vision of the future.
During the show Leonardo and Rotortrade renewed their long standing agreement for RT to be Leonardo’s sole global pre-owned helicopter distributor.
In other news
After more than 870 S-76s delivered worldwide since 1979, Sikorsky is shutting the S76 line down citing low demand and high production costs. The OEM is assessing partnerships with diverse companies to license the production instead.
Guimbal Helicopters shared new improvements to the popular two seats helicopter- Cabri G2. The updates to the helicopter include generic payload support and a certified cockpit and air conditioning. They also reported a four-seat helicopter being designed.
Milestone Aviation and Australia’s Helitak partnered to develop a 1,050 gallon, collapsible, belly-mounted fire suppression tank to equip the heavy twin Sikorsky S-92A for firefighting.
PHI announced its collaboration with Airbus and Shell to launch the H160 in the USA. It consists of 8 months of comprehensive use of the helicopter over the Gulf of Mexico. The aircraft will begin operations as soon as it gets FAA certification.
We can see continued popularity of market leaders such as the AW139, H125, 135/145, 429 and the 109SP, Bell’s renewal plans continue with the entry level 505 on track, the soon to enter the market 525 and possibly other evolutions in the pipe and together with the 609, SH09 and more immediate H160 entry into service the next few years promise to be very interesting.
?See you next year at the 75th anniversary celebration of HAI Heli-Expo 2023 in Atlanta!