Mexico Takes Delivery of Its First Airbus Military CN235 MPA Ordered Under the Mérida Initiative

The Mex­i­can Navy has tak­en deliv­ery of the first of four CN235 Mar­itime Patrol Air­craft (MPA) ordered from Air­bus Mil­i­tary through a con­tract with EADS North Amer­i­ca under the Méri­da Ini­tia­tive, a joint pro­gram between the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and the Gov­ern­ment of Mexico.

CN235 MPA Source: Air­bus Mil­i­tary Click to enlarge

The remain­ing three air­craft will be deliv­ered in the first half of 2012. 

This CN235 in MPA con­fig­u­ra­tion incor­po­rates the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped for sur­veil­lance over the sea. The com­bi­na­tion of the For­ward Look­ing Infra-Red (FLIR) sys­tem and a Search Radar allows this air­craft to locate and track ships to con­duct thor­ough patrols of a coast­line. The Auto­mat­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (AIS) and the Ful­ly Inte­grat­ed Tac­ti­cal Sys­tem (FITS) help make this air­craft the ide­al tool to car­ry out mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance mis­sions for the Mex­i­can Navy. The FITS was entire­ly devel­oped by Air­bus Mil­i­tary and ensures that the exten­sive data gath­ered by the aircraft’s on-board sen­sors can be eas­i­ly used by the crew to exe­cute their mission. 

“It is an hon­or that the Mex­i­can Navy is tak­ing deliv­ery of this Air­bus Mil­i­tary CN235 MPA for its fleet. We are look­ing for­ward to the upcom­ing entry into ser­vice of this high­ly ver­sa­tile air­craft that is ide­al to help enforce law on the Mex­i­can coast­line”, says Air­bus Mil­i­tary Head of Pro­grammes, Rafael Tentor. 

Includ­ing this lat­est deliv­ery, the Mex­i­can Navy already oper­ates three CN235, which are to be added to the two CN235 oper­at­ed by the Mex­i­can fed­er­al police. The Mex­i­can Air Force and Navy also oper­ate nine C295 and six C212 aircraft. 

To date, Air­bus Mil­i­tary has sold 211 CN235 to 32 dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors in 20 coun­tries all over the world. 

Able to car­ry up to six tons of pay­load and with a max­i­mum cruise speed of 240 kt (450 km/h), the CN235 is able to take off from, and land on, short, semi-pre­pared run­ways with soft sur­faces thanks to its Short Take Off and Land­ing (STOL) char­ac­ter­is­tics and the strong land­ing gear with tan­dem low-pres­sure tyre. Its excel­lent han­dling qual­i­ties, high manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty and fast engine (two Gen­er­al Elec­tric GE CT7-9C3, 1870 shp) response allow safe crit­i­cal oper­a­tions at a very low alti­tude. Out­stand­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty and sup­port­a­bil­i­ty result in high air­craft avail­abil­i­ty and the low­est life cycle cost (LCC) in its class. 

Air­bus Mil­i­tary is the only mil­i­tary and civic/humanitarian trans­port air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er to devel­op, pro­duce, sell and pro­vide sup­port and ser­vices for a com­pre­hen­sive fam­i­ly of air­lifters with a pay­load range of three to 45 tonnes. An Air­bus sub­sidiary, Air­bus Mil­i­tary is respon­si­ble for the A400M pro­gramme, the A330 Mul­ti Role Tanker Trans­port (MRTT) and fur­ther mil­i­tary deriv­a­tives based on Air­bus civ­il air­craft. These, togeth­er with the small­er ‘Light & Medi­um’ C295, CN235 and C212, make Air­bus Mil­i­tary the glob­al leader in the mar­ket for mil­i­tary trans­port, tanker and sur­veil­lance air­craft capa­ble of per­form­ing the most var­ied types of missions. 

Alto­geth­er, Air­bus Mil­i­tary has sold more than 1,000 air­craft to some 130 mil­i­tary, civ­il and gov­ern­men­tal cus­tomers. More than 800 of these air­craft have been deliv­ered. Air­bus is an EADS company.