“On behalf of Sikorsky, I would like to congratulate and thank all of our customers, suppliers and employees upon reaching this milestone. We are incredibly proud of this aircraft’s accomplishments, especially in safety and reliability, and look forward to continued success of the platform,” said Carey Bond, President, Sikorsky Commercial Systems & Services.
The first S-92 helicopter was delivered to PHI, Inc. in September 2004. Since then, Sikorsky has delivered more than 200 S-92 helicopters to customers throughout the world. The fleet has reached more than 750,000 flight hours, with nearly 90 percent of those hours providing offshore oil and gas worker transportation. S-92 helicopters also perform search and rescue missions, heads of state missions, and a variety of transportation missions for utility and airline passengers.
“From the moment we first heard about the S-92, we were excited about the aircraft. Over the past decade, our S-92 helicopters have been reliable, cost effective, technologically advanced, and most importantly, safe,” said Al Gonsoulin, CEO and Chairman of the Board for PHI, Inc.
In November 2013, PHI, Inc. also became the first customer to complete an operational flight of the new “Rig Approach” system. Rig Approach is a first of its kind functionality on the S-92 helicopter that provides helicopter operators with an automated approach to offshore rig and platform landings.
In May, Sikorsky was selected to build the next generation of Marine One helicopters for use by the U.S. Marine Corps in supporting the Office of the President of the United States. The Marine One fleet will be based on the S-92 helicopter, increasing the number of countries that fly heads of state missions using the S-92 aircraft to nearly a dozen.
“We’re continuing to build upon this aircraft’s success and look forward to the enhancements we have planned in the future,” added Bond.
One of the planned future enhancements is certification of the gross weight expansion for the S-92 helicopter. This will increase the maximum allowable take-off gross weight and result in increased payload capacity of the aircraft from 26,500 pounds to 27,700 pounds.
