Bell Helicopter and JSC Ural Works of Civil Aviation collaborate to create 407GXP assembly capabilities in Russia

Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company, announced today an agreement with JSC Ural Works of Civil Aviation (UWCA) for the development of final assembly capabilities by UWCA for the Bell 407GXP in order to support UWCA in obtaining Russian registry to facilitate their operations. Under the agreement UWCA agrees to purchase several Bell 407 GXP helicopters. The Bell 407GXP helicopters are planned to be delivered to UWCA by the end of 2015 from Bell and final assembled at the UWCA facility in Yekaterinburg.

“As one of the largest aircraft repair companies in the market, we are very excited about this relationship with Bell Helicopter,” said Artur Schtankov, chairman, UWCA. “We believe the Bell 407GXP's performance and operating cost makes it the right helicopter for the Russian market.”

“We believe there is a strong demand for the Bell 407GXP and we are delighted to establish a strong local presence in Russia,” said Patrick Moulay, vice president of global sales and marketing at Bell Helicopter. “This is a key milestone for Bell Helicopter that we expect will lead to further opportunities within the Russian market. We are committed to continue supporting the success of our Russian business partners as we strongly believe in the long term potential of the market.”

The new Bell 407GXP aircraft, introduced earlier this year, incorporates the reliability and advanced technology of the Bell 407GX platform, and introduces performance improvement, payload increase and pilot workload reduction. Derived from the Bell 407GX platform, the Bell 407GXP has an additional 50 lbs (22.5 kg) of payload capability, coupled with the new M250 Rolls-Royce engine that improves performance and fuel efficiency delivering class leading hot and high performance. The aircraft is also equipped with new avionics features such as a hover performance calculator improvement, as well as a transmission TBO extension of +500 hours that will lower maintenance costs.