Story ID: 342 
Kopter Rotates Toward Design Freeze
By: AIN Staff
Caption: P3 has more than 50 hours of testing.
Word Count: 843
Kopter (Booth B4016) expects its flight-test team to be ensconced this month at the southern tip of Sicily in Pozzalo, Italy, for the push to finalize the design of its new SH09 single-engine, large-cabin helicopter targeted for the air medical, rescue, law enforcement, utility, and passenger transport market segments. According to Kopter CEO Andreas Löwenstein, “Pozzalo is probably the spot in Europe where they have the best and most stable weather conditions,” as well as “a very good airport and air traffic management infrastructure for flight testing a helicopter.”

The weather conditions around Kopter’s Mollis, Switzerland production facility can be capricious, including snow, fog, wind. “Conditions here do not allow us to have a dense and well-planned flight sequence,” lamented Löwenstein. “Some months you can fly 10 percent of what you plan. We cannot go to certification on this path.”

At the end of last month, Kopter’s third prototype (P3) completed more than 50 hours of flight testing, including achieving a speed of 126 knots—the eventual cruise target is 140—and an altitude of more than 5,000 feet. “We feel that the aircraft is behaving very well, so it’s a good confirmation of the expected performance,” Löwenstein told AIN.

“We are quite confident that most of the configurations will stay stable now so we are already starting to build the long-lead components for [pre-series] PS4,” he added. By late summer, PS4, representing the design freeze version, will join the test program. It will have a larger cabin capable of carrying an additional eighth passenger as a result of a redesign of the fuel tank system. “We are planning for several hundred flights,” Löwenstein said.

By the end of this year, PS5, a clone of PS4, will be produced for the extreme weather portion of certification testing, including cold-weather regions (likely Alaska). Kopter is working with both EASA and FAA toward early 2020 aircraft certification, which Löwenstein acknowledged is “not so easy to predict.” He promised initial customer deliveries in late 2020 against a “committed order book” of 65 aircraft and nearly 100 letters of intent.

Kopter believes the SH09's spacious cabin, large sliding doors, and flat floor for “quick interchangeability of mission layouts” will help the helicopter compete against not only single-engine models “but in some not totally marginal cases we will equally address twin markets,” Löwenstein said. “People have twin-engine helicopters because they need bigger cabins; we have the cabin but at single-engine cost.”

The SH09 “has been laid out in a manner that will allow us to address five or six of the main subsegments that are steadily growing and where you have a tremendous replacement need in the coming years,” noted Löwenstein. “We have in mind from the beginning to address all these markets with the corresponding mission equipment. We will not come with a naked helicopter.”

Mission equipment to be offered will include special doors, flotations, cargo ropes, and a flat floor that permits quick cabin conversion from utility to passenger transport or from transport to medical, "basically taking minutes to change the configuration of the aircraft.”

“When you see it with the eyes of the EMS operator, it is the ideal EMS vehicle. When you see it with the eyes of a law enforcement team, it is the ideal law enforcement helicopter. When you put passengers into it for tourism. it’s the ideal tourism helicopter,” the Swiss executive stated.

True to its upstart spirit, Kopter has selected a non-traditional approach to training for the SH09—VR Motion (HAI Booth B3831), a relatively new virtual reality company. “When you come into the market with a quite sophisticated single-engine helicopter, you must be obsessed by safety,” Löwenstein told AIN. “We do not have a track record in terms of reliability and safety so we will emphasize from the beginning our pilots must be well trained.”

He called VR Motion “a very innovative company bringing new technology to the market; this is a very good means with reasonable cost to have outstanding pilots flying our aircraft.” Kopter plans to have its own pilot and maintenance training organization.

VR Motion CEO Fabi Riesen thinks virtual reality technology “is going to change the simulator market.” The small northeastern Switzerland company began experimenting with VR in 2013 and kicked into higher gear two years later, expanding their engineering team in collaboration with HSR University in Rapperswil. Its new product combines a VR headset with high-resolution graphics and a motion platform. The company produced a “marketing mockup” trainer for Kopter’s Heli-Expo exhibit in less than a month.

Löwenstein said Kopter, which rebranded a year ago from the original Marenco Swiss Helicopter name, should no longer be regarded as an engineering startup. It currently has 300 employees and expects to add another 100 this year. “We have to set up the product support organization, logistics, training—everything that is necessary to deliver service and operate helicopters.”