Member Article

£260m helicopter contract for AugustaWestland

Anglo-Italian helicopter company AugustaWestland has secured a £260m contract with the Ministry of Defence to provide support for Sea King helicopters.

The deal is part of the SKIOS agreement and gives AugustaWestland responsibility for delivering Sea King Depth Maintenance, Second Line Workshop services, spares and technical support.

Ray Edwards, Managing Director, AgustaWestland said “The Sea King, after more than 40 years in service, continues to play an important role supporting British troops and delivering higher than contracted levels of availability for search and rescue missions.

“The success of SKIOS and the similar flying hour based support solutions for the Merlin, Apache and Wildcat, demonstrate AgustaWestland’s commitment to the UK MoD to drive up aircraft availability whilst reducing through life costs.”

The SKIOS contract began in 2005 introduced a “payment by the flying hour” arrangement, the first integrated support contract awarded by the UK MoD for a helicopter type.

Almost 90 Sea Kings are in operation for the MoD, and this contract will sustain around 500 jobs.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .