Farnborough, The Ministry of Interior of Rhineland-Palatinate has ordered two five-bladed Airbus H145s for its police force, following a European tender launched earlier this year. The helicopters will replace the state’s current H135 fleet and will be operated by the police helicopters squadron in Winningen. The first delivery is planned for Q1 2024.

“We’d like to thank the Rhineland-Palatinate government for its continued trust in our helicopters”, says Wolfgang Schoder, Managing Director of Airbus Helicopters in Germany. “These five-bladed H145s will be outfitted with highly sophisticated equipment in order to further enhance the mission capabilities of the police force. We have seen with the flooding last year that law enforcement operators need to be able to rely on helicopters that can perform these demanding and essential missions and the H145 does just that.”

There are more than 200 helicopters from the H145 helicopter family deployed for public services and law enforcement missions around the world.

The new version of Airbus’ best-selling H145 light twin-engine helicopter was unveiled at Heli-Expo 2019 in Atlanta. This latest upgrade adds a new, innovative five-bladed rotor to the multi-mission H145, increasing the useful load of the helicopter by 150 kg. The simplicity of the new bearingless main rotor design also eases maintenance operations, further improving the benchmark serviceability and reliability of the H145, while improving ride comfort for both passengers and crew.

In total, there are more than 1,500 H145 family helicopters in service, logging a total of more than six million flight hours. Powered by two Safran Arriel 2E engines, the H145 is equipped with full authority digital engine control (FADEC) and the Helionix digital avionics suite. It includes a high performance 4-axis autopilot, increasing safety and reducing pilot workload. Its particularly low acoustic footprint makes the H145 the quietest helicopter in its class.

Release Airbus
Photo Rob Vogelaar