Bell Helicopter’s commercial deliveries fell by more than a third in the fourth quarter of 2016, but company executives began to see a strengthening on the order side as the year concluded, Bell parent Textron reported yesterday.
Bell delivered 35 commercial helicopters in the fourth quarter, down from 56 a year earlier. The dip in commercial deliveries, coupled with a softening on the military side, caused Bell revenues for the quarter to drop from $1.035 billion to $887 million in the quarter. For the year, revenues were down from $3.454 billion in 2015 to $3.239 billion last year.
Despite the down year, Textron chairman and CEO Scott Donnelly said, “On the commercial side, after a difficult period in the market with several quarters of very low order flow, we saw a significant increase in order activity in the back half of 2016.”
Backlog for Bell ended the year with an increase of $416 million, to a total of $5.4 billion. Donnelly noted that the company is seeing a strong conversion of letters of intent to orders on its new 505 Jet Ranger X. The helicopter, which received Transport Canada certification at the end of 2016, is on track for U.S. FAA approval in the first quarter.
Bell also is hopeful to restart flight tests of its 525 Relentless shortly. The flight-test program was sidelined after FTV1 broke up in flight on July 6. “We have a team working very hard to try to get that aircraft back into the flight-test program here in the early part of this year,” Donnelly said. “I think we’re getting close.”