Bell Helicopter's 407GX earns FAA certification

Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company (NYSE: TXT), announced today that its newest version of the popular Bell 407 – the 407GX – has earned Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification following its certification by Transport Canada earlier this year.

Since the Bell 407GX was introduced in February at the 2011 HELI-EXPO annual convention in Orlando, Fla., Bell Helicopter has received more than 60 orders, with the first expected to deliver later this year.

Built on the success of the Bell 407 , the 407GX is the only helicopter equipped with the innovative Garmin G1000HTM integrated glass flight deck, making it the most advanced light, single-engine rotorcraft on the market.

The 407GX's integrated glass flight deck provides aircrews essential flight information at a glance for greater situational awareness, improved operational capability and increased safety.

The advanced cockpit features two 10.4" high-resolution LCD displays with an intuitive, easy to scan layout and an integrated avionics system that presents flight instrumentation, navigation, communication and identification information. Integrated safety features include:

· Traffic Information System (TIS)

· Helicopter Synthetic Vision Technology (HSVT™)

· Moving map

· Helicopter Terrain Avoidance Warning System (HTAWS), and

· Range ring calculation

Engine and crew alerting systems such as power situation indicators (PSI) and fuel flow, as well as automatic power assurance checks, are additional benefits of the Garmin G1000HTM integrated flight deck. The advanced suite features critical flight parameter storage on an SD card for post flight analysis.