Milestone leases five H145s to Aramco

GECAS’s leasing company Milestone Aviation and Airbus helicopters have signed a contract to provide five H145 helicopters to Saudi offshore oil company Aramco Overseas Company.

The aircraft will be sourced from Milestone’s orderbook with Airbus and leased to Aramco. The helicopters will be delivered over the next twelve months.

These aircraft will be added to the 24 medium helicopters that Milestone is currently leasing to Aramco.

Milestone President & CEO Daniel Rosenthal said: “Aramco’s trust in Milestone’s ability to deliver certainty of execution — coupled with our financial and technical capabilities — is greatly appreciated by our team.

“We take pride in the fact that our long-term partnership approach to further assist Aramco with the introduction into service of their comprehensive medium and light-twin fleet renewal program now places Aramco as one of Milestone’s largest global customers.”

Mid-size helicopters are one part of the helicopter market that are seeing continued business. Helicopters such as the H145 and AW139 are holding up well in a climate where the number of transactions is slowing down.

This announcement comes at a time when helicopter lessors are having a hard time raising debt for helicopter placements. Milestone is somewhat exempt from this as it can tap into parent company GE’s capital. In fact, when GE bought Milestone in 2015, it paid off all of the lessors existing bank loans.