Yesterday, Bond Offshore Helicopters registered a new Eurocopter EC225LP helicopter with the UK Civil Aviation Authority.  Going by other similar activity in recent years, this likely means the delivery flight from the factory in Marignane started yesterday or is expected to today.

Registered G-PUMR and with Eurocopter serial 2818, this example takes the current Bond Offshore EC225 fleet to five – the others being G-REDR, REDT, REDV and REDW.  The company did also have G-REDU but that was involved in an accident on 19th February 2009 (see story)

Trivia – the G-REDx series has been exhausted and the UK CAA do not re-issue registrations to different airframes from the one a given mark gets first allocated to.  RED was chosen due to the Bond company colour scheme.  Reverting to the G-PUMx series takes Bond back to its previous incarnation when it first started using this series in 1983 for its AS332L fleet before that company was sold to CHC.  The current Bond Offshore Helicopters started trading in 2004 as a sister division to the already successful onshore Bond Air Services, although the whole group was sold to Workd Helicopters – see World Helicopters acquires Bond Aviation Group for €300m

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com