Helicopters Airbus Helicopters aims to focus on wind turbine market

The wind turbine market is constantly growing. Airbus Helicopters has now released, that the company seeks to shift its focus towards that branch. In the coming two decades, the manufacturer sees strong demand for rotorcraft in this area and expects revenues of approximately €9 billion.

As many offshore companies do not purchase their transportation means themselves, third-party operators are often used for crew transportation, rescue missions and maintenance. Here, Airbus Helicopters hopes to acquire new customers.

Dennis Bernitz, Head of Western Europe Sales stated: “Helicopters are an integral part of any logistics concept for offshore wind farms [...] Helicopters can be used to deploy technicians or medical personnel in emergencies, even in rough seas, and can also transport operating personnel between the shore and the wind farm.”

With the rising wind turbine output, offshore companies rely on a fast and efficient logistics systems, which have a high availability. Because if a malfunction occurs, the losses have to be kept to a minimum in order to guarantee profitability.

In addition, wind parks are being built further and further away from the shore. Here, a helicopter comes in handy to reduce transportation times and to ensure safety standards.

Helicopters have been used in the offshore branch for a long time, as the risks for personnel to experience seasickness are too high. According to Airbus, the probability of mistakes being made by seasick technicians is considerably higher than in the case of healthy technicians.

Airbus Helicopters offers the H134, H145 and H175 helicopter for offshore operations like crew transportation and rescue missions. The manufacturer further hopes, that in the future its new H160 helicopter will be available for this sector too.