NHIndustries is proud to announce the first flight of two production NH90 helicopters happened in the same day:
- the first Italian Army NH90-TTH and
- the first Finnish Defence Forces NH90-TTT.
The Italian Army NH90 took-off on 15 September 2004 at 15.35 from Agusta facility in Vergiate airfield, lasting in flight 30 minutes, handled by Agusta test pilots Giuseppe Lococo and Giuseppe Afruni, and test engineers Stefano Rognoni and Michele Riccobono.
The Finnish Defence Forces NH90 took off nearly at the same time, lasting in flight more than one hour from the Eurocopter airfield in Marignane. The flight was performed by the Eurocopter test pilot Philippe Boutry and flight engineers Denis Trivier and Jean-Claude Rabany.
These two helicopters, together with the first NH90 for the German Army that celebrated the maiden flight last May in Donauwörth, Eurocopter Deutschland facility, feature the full fly-by-wire flight control system. NHIndustries feels privileged to remember that NH90 is today the only production helicopter flying such an advanced and performing control system in the world. In addition the NH90 features full composite crashworthy airframe, full aircraft/avionics/mission system integration, and the state-of-the-art system suite today available for multirole operation and multi-national cooperation in the modern military scenario.
The four assembly lines based in Agusta, Eurocopter, Eurocopter Deutschland, and Patria (the Finnish contractor for Nordic NH90s production) are day by day getting up new achievements to cope with the impressive logbook of the NH90 Programme which totals 357 orders and 86 options in Europe and overseas.
