Luxaviation Group formed a strategic partnership between its dedicated VVIP helicopter service Luxaviation Helicopters and Icon Aviation, a business aviation and rotorcraft operator in Brazil, which also includes the use of Icon Aviation’s 12 VIP facilities.

Bell Helicopter is launching a Certified Training Facilities (CTF) program to expand its global training footprint. Helideal, a Bell Independent Representative based in southern France, is to becoming the first CTF offering initial and recurrent pilot training under the umbrella of the Bell Training Academy.

Enstrom Helicopter Corp. signed a contract at Helitech International to deliver a new 280FX into France. The deal is being completed by its dealer, François Gatineau, CEO of Rotor & Aircraft Sarl. 


When the 1980s began, Mike Stanberry was running a construction company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a business partner. Both had their private pilot’s licenses – Stanberry since 1973 – and, operating as subcontractors across Louisiana and into Arkansas and Texas, they decided to use airplanes to check on job sites and make sure the prime contractors were truly ready for them.

Boeing completed its US$4.25 billion acquisition of KLX Aerospace Solutions to expand its services business, which the company describes as a US$2.8 trillion, 10-year aerospace services market.

The Aerospace Industries Association of Canada introduced Vision 2025, Beyond our Imagination, to help chart a course for growth and investment in the country's aerospace sector. The initiative will be led by former Premier of Quebec Jean Charest, currently a partner at McCarthy Tétrault.

Bell Helicopter signed what it describes as a teaming agreement with Garmin International on the development and integration of the autonomous vehicle management computer (VMC) systems to support Bell’s vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.


The board of directors of Airbus SE selected Guillaume Faury as the future chief executive officer of Airbus. Faury, 50, who currently serves as president of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, will succeed Tom Enders, 59, who remains CEO until the Annual General Meeting on April 10, 2019, when the appointment of Faury as executive member of the board will be submitted to shareholders.

Test pilot Dan Wells has been named as a Fellow by The Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), recognizing Wells’ more than three decades of piloting and 7,200 flight hours. He continues to fly in Leonardo’s AW-609 TiltRotor program.

Sure, HAC’s convention has been growing, but it has also been changing in other ways. This year’s convention in Vancouver is the largest-ever trade show hosted by the Helicopter Association of Canada, featuring a growing number of international exhibitors and international delegates who are discovering that Canada has the world’s second largest fleet of commercial helicopters; that Canada holds a vibrant helicopter industry where more and more of our domestic operators are looking to expand their businesses outside Canada. But we still have work to do here at home.

Airbus Helicopters delivered one H135 to the Health Commission of Qingdao in China’s Shandong Province, which is the first of 100 Airbus H135s to be delivered to China based on a framework agreement signed in June 2016.