Babcock MCS Offshore have a fleet of four Airbus H175 helicopters, and we recently tracked one of these taking an unusual route.  Ship #5022 registered as G-MCSE took a two day ferry flight on 29th and 30th January from Babcock’s base at Aberdeen through to the Airbus Helicopters facility at Albacete in Spain, with an overnight stop in Jersey.

Airbus Helicopters has provided the following statement about this “Airbus has a retrofit to perform on a small set of aircraft in line with an agreement reached at the time of delivery. This retrofit will be performed in Spain by Airbus and the aircraft will then be returned to Babcock. This activity has long been planned so that it does not impact the customer’s operations. The first aircraft has now been flown to Airbus Helicopters’ Albacete facility in Spain for the relevant work to be performed.”

Separately, HeliHub.com understands that the three earlier delivered H175s in the Babcock fleet are affected, those delivered in the first half of 2017.  The fourth example, delivered late November 2018 may not need the “retrofit” work, given that the work described in their statement has been planned for a long time.  As to what the work entails, the words “corrosion proofing” have been suggested by other  sources.

We do not have any information as to whether the two H175s operated in Australia by Babcock are affected, or indeed the fleets of any other operators such as CHC or NHV

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com