A Leonardo AW169 has recently been sighted on a test flight near the factory in Milan in the colours of the Washington Redskins NFL team.  With the same stripes and the helmet logo on the tail, the scheme matches Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder’s two jets.  Under the company DSWA LLC, Snyder owns Bombardier Global Express N904DS and Gulfstream 450 N904TS – the last two letters of the registrations referring to his initials and that of his wife Tanya Snyder.  The company also has a Cessna 208B floatplane N904LS, and a reservation on the marks N904WL.

As recently as August 2018, this AW169 was seen on test flights still in primer, but a recent image online from mid October finds it in the Washington Redskins scheme with the FAA N# registration largely covered over save the last “S”.  Image analysis suggests that it will become N904LS – currently on the Cessna floatplane – which could in turn take up the reserved registration N904WL.

It is likely that the aircraft has been parked at the factory for around 18 months.  While a production line usually starts in numerical order, the number of options available to aircraft purchasers will commonly mean that they do not make the move to the flight shed in the same order.  Snyder’s aircraft is MSN 69036, which HeliHub.com calculates would ordinarily have been delivered around February 2017 when compared to other airframes on the line at the same time.  Whether an earlier intended owner was unable to complete their transaction, or its purchaser bought a slot with a view to resell, is unknown.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com