Leonardo Helicopters has new managing director and Unifly AW169 order

Leonardo Helicopters introduced its new managing director Gian Piero Cutillo on the opening day of Helitech 2017 in London.

Gian Piero Cutillo takes over immediately and was introduced during the AW189K variant launch.

Cutillo was most recently chief financial officer at Leonardo SpA, the parent company of Leonardo Helicopters.

One of his first duties as MD of Leonardo Helicopters was to witness the signing of a firm order contract for two AW169s for Unifly, the Danish helicopter operator. Unifly will take delivery of the first aircraft in the last quarter of 2017 with the second being delivered in early 2018. The aircraft will begin operations in the first quarter of 2018 performing wind farm support for DONG Energy at Hornsea Project One, in the North Sea, 120km offshore from Humberside, UK.

The helicopters will be based at the Unifly facility at Humberside Airport in the UK.

The signing was performed by Emilio Dalmasso, SVP Commercial Business Unit at Leonardo and Jorgen Erik Andersen, CEO of Unifly.

The order marks the first contract for the AW169 model for Unifly and the first in Denmark as well as the first AW169s to be used to support wind farms in UK.