After this year’s Helitech International event closed its doors, the event assumed a new identity, becoming the Vertical Flight Expo & Conference.
Organizer Reed Exhibitions made the change to keep pace with the evolving rotorcraft industry. The new branding better reflects the industry’s ongoing expansion, which will increasingly encompass all forms of vertical flight, from conventional rotorcraft to new VTOL aircraft, as well as the new technologies and solutions that are enhancing rotorcraft operations and the future of vertical flight.
The first edition of the new Vertical Flight Expo & Conference will be held at a new venue, Farnborough International’s recently launched Exhibition & Conference Centre, rather than London Excel’s Centre, which has been Helitech’s home for the last three UK editions of the show.
Reed hopes that the show will continue to showcase innovation and to attract more businesses from across the supply chain, providing operators with access to the leading aircraft interiors, avionics and navigation systems, communication equipment, night vision, engines, leasing and regulatory solutions, we well as emerging technologies. Moving to Farnborough—an existing aerodrome—will allow more product demonstration opportunities and customer test flights.
At Farnborough, the Vertical Flight Expo & Conference will be a biennial event. Some hope that the new show will remain an annual event and that it will continue to alternate between the UK and a strategically important mainland European venue, though this may not be Amsterdam, and will not involve the European Helicopter Association (EHA). Reed Exhibitions and the EHA have announced that they will part ways following this year’s event in Amsterdam. The EHA plans to organize a new event in Cologne, Germany, from 2020, in conjunction with the European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) Rotorcraft Symposium.