Estimated reading time 5 minutes, 44 seconds.
At Heli-Expo 2013, Eagle Copters showed off the Eagle 407HP, which had made its first flight a few weeks before arriving in Las Vegas. This year, Eagle’s re-engined version of the Bell 407 was back on the show floor in Anaheim, with its flight testing complete. And the company was pleased with the results.
“It did develop the performance we were thinking it would and we were hoping it would,” Eagle Copters vice president Spyke Whiting told Canadian Skies. Although Whiting was unable to share specific performance figures, he confirmed that the 407HP — which replaces the Bell 407’s existing Rolls-Royce 250-C47B engine with a 1,021-shafthorsepower Honeywell HTS900-2 — achieved one of its primary goals during testing: namely, to deliver dramatic gains over the baseline 407 in hover-out-of-ground-effect (HOGE) performance at altitude. Now, he said, he’s confident that the model will be competitive with the Airbus Helicopters AS350 B3, which has long dominated the light utility helicopter market for operations at higher altitudes.
“From what we’ve seen internally, it’s going to get people’s attention,” he said. “In a word, it’s going to be great.” In the weeks before Heli-Expo 2014, the Eagle 407HP and its HTS900-2 engine were undergoing final analyses prior to Transport Canada certification, which Whiting said would in all likelihood occur this spring. He said he expected that to be closely followed by United States Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) approval, thanks to the fact that Transport Canada and the FAA worked directly together throughout the flight testing process.
“That’s something we learned from the Eagle Single,” Whiting said, referring to the company’s previous re-engining program, which replaces the existing Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 TwinPac on the Bell 212 with a single Honeywell T53 engine. With the Eagle Single, the need to repeat certain aspects of the flight testing program for the FAA’s benefit led to a delay in U.S. certification — a lag that he hopes can be avoided with the 407HP, Whiting said.
Eagle still hasn’t announced a price for the 407HP, although that should also be coming soon. “We hope to start a production helicopter within the next 60 days, at which point we’ll be able to set a price point,” said Whiting. “We don’t want to set a price until we have a good idea of the production costs . . . and we want to be able to explain what people are getting for the price.”
International Expansion
Eagle Copters has made progress on a number of fronts since Heli-Expo 2013. Notably, in November of last year, it launched Eagle Copters Australasia, based at Coffs Harbour Airport, New South Wales, Australia. Led by managing director Grant Boyter and chief engineer Rohan Schallmeiner, Eagle Copters Australasia is Eagle Copters’ second major international expansion (the first being Eagle Copters South America, in Chile). “It’s our first entry into that part of the world, and it’s going well,” Whiting said, noting that Eagle Copters Australasia placed the first Eagle Single in Australia on a firefighting contract in January. In addition to offering helicopters for sale and lease, Eagle Copters Australasia will eventually have facilities to complete all servicing, rebuild, and fit-out requirements, including painting.
Meanwhile, Whiting reported that Eagle Copters South America experienced good growth in sales in 2013, in addition to expanding its repair services with the installation of approved fixtures. Eagle currently has 15 helicopters operating on lease in South America, and has seen steady growth in the market. “We’re really fortunate to have great customers in South America — we’re growing together,” Whiting said. Moving forward, he added, “You’re going to see an emphasis placed on the global operations of Eagle.”
Still, there’s plenty happening at Eagle’s headquarters in Calgary, Alta., including the recent dedication of a new shop for Eagle Avionics Systems, which was created after Eagle took over Geneva Aviation from sister company DART Aerospace last year. Whiting said that having the avionics division co-located with Eagle’s maintenance facility will help with the certification and development of its avionics products. Meanwhile, he said, “the continued support of our existing customers has been terrific,” as evidenced by the announcement, in January, that CALSTAR had selected the Eagle Avionics Systems G13116 Digital Audio Control Panel for eight new Airbus Helicopters EC135s. Eagle has also developed a mobile demonstration unit for the panel, which can be used to demonstrate the product at customers’ locations.
“We’re very excited about the digital audio control panel,” Whiting said. “Behind the scenes, we’ve been pretty busy.”
