AgustaWestland yesterday delivered an AW189 to their Yeovil plant to commence work on the EASA certification of the type in the SAR role.  The aircraft is currently on the Italian register as I-PTFF and was delivered via a brief overnight stop at Norwich Airport on Monday night, and then ferried through to Yeovil yesterday.

The aircraft is the same one displayed at the Paris Air Show, and is in full Bristow colours.  This news follows hard on the heels of the announcement that Bristow have signed for 11 AW189s for the UK SAR contract – although these aircraft will be in the white/red Coastguard colour scheme and not the blue/white/red Bristow offshore colours.

The photo below is Copyright 2013 and reproduced here with permission of Andy Marchmont

Ben Haverdee – HeliHub.com