AIRTELIS takes delivery of new EC225 helicopter
Company formed earlier this year will use helicopter to check electric power lines, to perform maintenance and to help with construction work
Eurocopter held a ceremony and delivered a new
and first EC225 helicopter to AIRTELIS, a wholly owned subsidiary of RTE. Helicopter
services and operations make up a separate unit at RTE that is specialised in
surveillance, maintenance and construction work on high and very high-voltage
power lines. RTE has logged a total of more than 250,000 flight hours, the
equivalent of nearly 30 years of uninterrupted helicopter flight.
At the ceremony, Philippe Dupuis, deputy
director general responsible for finance at RTE and president of AIRTELIS,
said: “The progress in development of heliborne operations by RTE has been
accompanied by successive generations of Eurocopter helicopters, leading to the
acquisition today of the first EC225.”
“The first EC225’s delivery to AIRTELIS once
again demonstrates the confidence that our long-standing customer RTE has in
our products. This helicopter has been fitted with special equipment unlike any
other in the world, designed and developed by Eurocopter in close cooperation
with RTE. It will enable AIRTELIS to optimize its construction work on high-voltage
power lines, and I am firmly convinced that the excellent relations we have
enjoyed over the past several decades will be a source of spectacular new
inventions in the years to come,” declared Dominique Maudet, Eurocopter’s
executive vice president of Global Business and Services.
