Helicopter News

X3 flights to restart

Eurocopter X3 In Paris last week, Eurocopter president and chief executive Lutz Bertling confirmed that
the company was resuming the test flight programme of the X3 (Xcubed) prototype, starting
in February 2012.

The company said that it was always the intention to restart flying with
the aircraft and to discover more about the technologies used in the prototype.

Eurocopter will test the new technologies more and expects to fly even
faster during this round of test flights. They said if they gained the helicopter
speed record with these flights it would be ‘the cherry on the cake’. The
company hopes that some of the technological advances made by the X3 prototype
might be used in future helicopter designs.

Eurocopter are particularly interested in looking at longer flights to
distant oil and gas platforms where speed and endurance matters.

Terry Spruce

Terry is Senior News Editor and writes for both Corporate Jet Investor and Helicopter Investor. He is also responsible for our helicopter guides. Terry has been an aviation enthusiast since the early 1970s. He is a lapsed Private Pilot and ex-Piper Cherokee owner. He has flown a number of light aircraft and is comfortable sitting in the co-pilot's seat or the back of any aircraft. Before moving to journalism he was a banker for 20 years. You can contact him at: terry@corporatejetinvestor.com or follow him on twitter @Terry_Spruce