Helitech Matures

The  good thing about HeliTech is that it is now a mature show, which has found a solid place in the helicopter world; the bad thing is that in the manner of the mature there was little new on offer and certainly nothing to surprise!

What new things there were: that the Bristow Academy will now be offering engineering as well as flying training, and that a coalition headed by PremiAir will also be doing engineering training, were however, very good news. For a long time now there has been a shortage of engineers and that Patrick Corr and PremiAir boss Andrew Davis have the vision to do something about this augers well for the ‘ helicopter future’.

What was very noticeable at HeliTech was the number of Russians and Eastern Europeans at the show, either with booths or simply walking the floor. Some like Mikhail and Yuri Kazachkov were promoting their helicopter show in Russia in May 2008, others like Kamov and Kazan were looking at a possible market in Europe for their helicopters. Russia, which has half the population of the USA, now has 2000 helicopters...