CHC Group (OTC Pink Sheets: HELIQ) announced it had recently reached the 25,000 flight hour milestone on its fleet of AW139s in Australia.

CHC was the first commercial operator to fly AW139s in Australia and has used the aircraft to fly critical emergency medical service (EMS) missions in New South Wales as well as provide oil and gas transfer services out of Karratha, in Western Australia’s North West region. CHC took delivery of its first AW139 in 2005 and since then has logged more than 125,000 flying hours across its global fleet.

Flying preparation for Australia EMS service commenced in February 2008, with the first EMS flight in Wollongong taking place in August 2008. The AW139s dedicated to serving the community through EMS service have gone on to fly 12,800 hours as air ambulances, responding to emergency rescues, accidents and inter-hospital transfers.

The oil and gas transfer service started in March 2011 and has flown more than 12,000 hours in support of crew transfers for oil and gas customers to the North West Shelf oil and gas precinct in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

“The team at CHC Australia have reached an important milestone reaching 25,000 flight hours on the AW139,” said Chris Krajewski, Senior Executive, CHC Asia Pacific. “This milestone represents the culmination of nearly a decade of dedication and hard work, both in saving lives and ensuring our passengers get to and from their workplace safely.”

“It is a testament to our flight crews, engineers and operations teams that we have flown these aircraft in such diverse geographies, undertaking vastly different activities year-in, year-out.”