The Airbus H175 has received type certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), allowing deliveries of the super medium helicopter to begin in the country.
The development of the H175 was a joint project with China’s Avicopter, and included the creation of a Chinese variant of the type, known as the AC352. The CAAC approved the AC352’s type certificate last year.
Following the CAAC’s approval of the H175, Airbus said it would deliver four of the aircraft to Chinese customers this year.
“The Chinese certification of the H175 is another great achievement in the continued successful partnership between Airbus Helicopters and the Chinese helicopter industry,” said Bruno Even, CEO of Airbus Helicopters.
“The H175’s advanced state-of-the art performances and reliability will serve to provide the people of China with the ability to perform critical life-saving missions even in the most severe conditions,” he added.
The H175 entered service in 2014, shortly before the downturn in the oil-and-gas market. Production ramped down to just four or five aircraft per year in 2017.
In a media briefing on the H175 earlier this year, Jerome Fagot, head of the H175 program, said Airbus hoped to ramp production up to 20 aircraft a year within “a couple of years.”
Airbus received eight orders for the type in 2022, and has sought to diversify the market for the type in recent years, expanding its use in search-and-rescue and VIP operations, and launching the militarized H175M version.
More than 70 percent of the H175 fleet services the offshore sector, with the remainder split between public services and private/business aviation.
The first major campaign for the H175M is the U.K.’s New Medium Helicopter program, which seeks to provide a replacement for the Royal Air Force’s fleet of Airbus Puma HC2s by 2025.
Speaking earlier this year, Fagot said Airbus would pursue type certification of the H175 from the Federal Aviation Administration once the H160 had completed the process. The new medium H160 received FAA approval at the end of June.
The global H175 fleet recorded 40,000 flight hours last year — up from 26,000 in 2019.
