Features SAR
Rhineland-Palatinate orders two H145 helicopters for its police force

The Ministry of Interior of Rhineland-Palatinate ordered two five-bladed Airbus H145s for its police force, following a European tender launched earlier this year. The helicopters will replace the state’s current H135 fleet and will be operated by the police helicopters squadron in Winningen, Germany. The first aircraft delivery is planned for Q1 2024.

“These five-bladed H145s will be outfitted with highly sophisticated equipment in order to further enhance the mission capabilities of the police force,” Wolfgang Schoder, Managing Director of Airbus Helicopters in Germany. “We have seen with the flooding last year that law enforcement operators need to be able to rely on helicopters that can perform these demanding and essential missions and the H145 does just that.”

Airbus notes there are more than 200 helicopters from the H145 helicopter family deployed for public services and law enforcement missions around the world.

The new version of Airbus’ H145 light twin-engine helicopter was unveiled at Heli-Expo 2019 with a new five-bladed rotor for the multi-mission H145, increasing the useful load of the helicopter by 150 kg. The simplicity of the new bearingless main rotor design also eases maintenance operations, explains Airbus, improving the benchmark serviceability of the H145, as well as ride comfort.

In total, there are more than 1,500 H145 family helicopters in service, logging a total of more than six million flight hours. The helicopter is powered by two Safran Arriel 2E engines and equipped with full authority digital engine control (FADEC), Helionix avionics and 4-axis autopilot.