AgustaWestland, a Finmeccanica company, is pleased to announce the delivery of the first AW101 VVIP helicopter to Turkmenistan Airlines. The contract for two AW101 VVIP helicopters was signed at the 2010 Farnborough International Air Show.

Assembly of the aircraft took place at AgustaWestland’s Yeovil facility in South West England. AgustaWestland has also provided pilot and maintainer training and an initial spares package under the contract.

AgustaWestland’s CEO, Daniele Romiti commented “It is a great honour that the AW101 has been selected to provide transport for Turkmenistan Airlines. We believe the AW101 is the most capable, comfortable and safe helicopter in its class and we look forward to seeing both aircrafts in service.”

The AW101 has a very spacious cabin, high levels of passenger comfort and the very latest communications features, making it the ideal helicopter for the transport of Heads of State and other VVIP transport duties. Its cabin is 30% larger than its nearest competitor and it can fly up to 1000 km, whilst multiple redundancy of critical systems and components gives the aircraft unmatched levels of safety and survivability.

The aircraft departed Yeovil on 29th March, fully loaded for the 5 day ferry flight across Europe to Turkmenistan. The journey included stop-overs in Germany, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan prior to transiting to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan.  After over 30 hours of flight time the aircraft arrived serviceable to the main operational base. 

Almost 200 AW101 helicopters have been ordered by customers around the world so far to perform a wide range of government, public service and military missions. The AW101 has logged over 280,000 flight hours in service in Italy, UK, Denmark, Portugal, Japan, Canada and others whilst delivering exceptional performance and high levels of safety.