COPENHAGEN 10-06-2022 — NATO-member Norway has terminated its two-decade-old contract for 14 NH90 maritime helicopters, citing delays, errors and time-consuming maintenance. It will return the helicopters and wants a full refund of the nearly 5 billion kroner ($525 million) it has paid, the defense minister said Friday.

Norway ordered 14 helicopters for coast guard and anti-submarine warfare duties in 2001, the Armed Forces said. They were originally slated for delivery by the end of 2008. As of today, only eight have been delivered in a fully operational configuration.

Reliability issues continue to afflict the helicopters, Jaere says; even in their final configuration, the failure rate per flight hour is 40 times too high.

Combined with ongoing maintainability problems this frequently sees just one helicopter available, or even sometimes none.

Aircraft that were mean to fly 3,900h per year instead average 700h, says the defence ministry.

The NHIndustries helicopter consortium said it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision.

“NHIndustries considers this termination to be legally groundless,” it said in statement.

It said it had not been offered the possibility to discuss the latest proposal made to improve the availability of the NH90 in Norway or address specific Norwegian requirements.