The Editor's Letter

Georgina Hunter-Jones

The sudden jump in popularity of helicopter flying seems to have left the supplying world behind. Suddenly there are neither enough helicopters to fill all the commercial jobs nor enough pilots. Or at least, and here is the rub, there are plenty of low time, piston trained pilots but not nearly enough turbine rated, instrument trained, high time pilots. So much is this the case, that aviation companies are finally awakening to the realisation that they will either have to pay for the training of their pilots or import them from other countries in the EU (the Polish pilot). This kind of thing has not happened since Bristow Helicopters gave up doing scholarships.

Given that there is now an increase in manufacturing, is there a chance of the advent of a helicopter-powering-fuel which actually improves rather than destroys the environment? Of course, the event which really gets Research and Development departments going is war, hence the production of 100 Cayuse (forerunner of the MD500 on which we have a test flight) a month during the Vietnam War and Israel's interest in the X-Hawk flying car, on display at Farnborough. But during war-time, interest in reducing emissions...