Schweden/Finnland

Swedish Defence Agency (FMV) takes deliv­ery of the first NH90 heli­copter assem­bled in Finland

After the hand-over of the very first Swedish NH90 trans­port heli­copter dur­ing Le Bour­get 2007, FMV took deliv­ery today of its sec­ond NH90, which is the first one assem­bled by Patria in Hal­li, Finland.

Swe­den signed a con­tract for 25 NH90 in Sep­tem­ber 2001, cov­er­ing 18 firm orders of vari­ants for the Tac­ti­cal Trans­port Heli­copter (TTH), which include 13 Tac­ti­cal Troop Trans­port (TTT)/Search and Res­cue (SAR) heli­copters and five Anti-Sub­ma­rine War­fare (ASW), plus sev­en options. These heli­copters are equipped with a com­plete new Tac­ti­cal Mis­sion Sys­tem (TMS) devel­oped by SAAB in coop­er­a­tion with NHIn­dus­tries. Of the 18 NH90, 14 are to be assem­bled in Finland.

Swe­den is the launch cus­tomer of the High Cab­in Ver­sion (HCV) of the NH90 which fea­tures an increased usable cab­in height by 24 cen­time­tres, from 1.58 meters in the stan­dard ver­sion to 1.82 meters. This vari­ant allows oper­a­tors and pas­sen­gers to stand upright in the cabin.

Today’s deliv­ered heli­copter will be the first NH90 to be oper­at­ed in Swe­den by the Swedish Defence Forces ini­tia lly for train­ing pur­pose, while the one deliv­ered dur­ing Le Bour­get 2007 will sup­port the Swedish instruc­tors’ train­ing pro­gramme in France until 2008.

Patria, which is a defence and aero­space group focus­ing on mil­i­tary air­craft and heli­copter life cycle sup­port ser­vices, is respon­si­ble for assem­bling most of the Nordic NH90 ordered by Swe­den and Fin­land in the frame of an indus­tri­al coop­er­a­tion agree­ment called Nordic Stan­dard Heli­copter Pro­gram (NSHP). Patria’s teams have been work­ing very close­ly with Euro­copter and its part­ners for the past 3 years to acquire the request­ed knowl­edge and skills to assem­ble and main­tain the NH90.

The Finnish assem­bly line was the 4th oper­a­tional line to assem­ble the NH90, after the ones set up in France, Ger­many and Italy. A fifth assem­bly line, based in Aus­tralia, start­ed pro­duc­ing the Aus­tralian NH90, called MRH90, in May 2007.

About Euro­copter
Estab­lished in 1992, the Fran­co-Ger­man-Span­ish Euro­copter Group is a Divi­sion of EADS, a world leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. The Euro­copter Group employs approx. 14,000 peo­ple. In 2006, Euro­copter con­firmed its posi­tion as the world’s No. 1 heli­copter man­u­fac­tur­er with a turnover of 3.8 bil­lion euros, orders for 615 new heli­copters, and a 52% per­cent mar­ket share in the civ­il and para­pub­lic sec­tors. Over­all, the Group’s prod­ucts account for 30% per­cent of the total world heli­copter fleet. Its strong world­wide pres­ence is ensured by its 17 sub­sidiaries on five con­ti­nents, along with a dense net­work of dis­trib­u­tors, cer­ti­fied agents and main­te­nance cen­tres. More than 9,800 Euro­copter heli­copters are cur­rent­ly in ser­vice with over 2,500 cus­tomers in 140 coun­tries. Euro­copter offers the largest civ­il and mil­i­tary heli­copter range in the world. 

Text- / Bildquelle (source): EADS

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