Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Toba­go Orders Four AW139 Heli­copters

AgustaWest­land, a Fin­mec­ca­ni­ca com­pa­ny, is pleased to announce that the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and Toba­go has signed a con­tract to pur­chase four AW139 medi­um twin tur­bine heli­copters. Trinidad and Tobago’s Air Guard (TTAG) will estab­lish a ded­i­cat­ed unit to use these heli­copters for search and res­cue, sur­face sur­veil­lance, law enforce­ment, drug inter­dic­tion and dis­as­ter relief oper­a­tions. The con­tract also includes an exten­sive train­ing and logis­ti­cal sup­port ser­vice for the first five years. The con­tract, com­pris­ing the air­craft and sup­port pack­age, is val­ued at US$348 mil­lion. A con­sor­tium involv­ing AgustaWest­land, Bris­tow Caribbean, FB Helis­er­vices of UK and Helidex of USA will be estab­lished to man­age the AW139 pro­gramme in Trinidad and Toba­go with train­ing ser­vices to be sup­plied in Italy, the UK and the USA. Oper­a­tions will pri­mar­i­ly take place from Piar­co Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and from off­shore patrol ves­sels, work­ing in con­junc­tion with the Coast Guard. This order marks the estab­lish­ment of the first Search and Res­cue heli­copter unit in the country.

Giuseppe Orsi, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, AgustaWest­land said “We are delight­ed that the Trinidad and Toba­go has select­ed the AW139 to meet its search and res­cue and home­land secu­ri­ty require­ments. This pur­chase demon­strates the con­tin­ued suc­cess of the AW139 plat­form world­wide and in the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean mar­kets where we see good busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the future”. The TTAG joins a num­ber of AW139 oper­a­tors world­wide includ­ing the Span­ish Marine Safe­ty Agency, the UK Mar­itime and Coast­guard Agency, the Ital­ian Coast Guard, the Japan­ese Coast Guard, the Kore­an Coast Guard and the Malaysian Mar­itime Enforce­ment Agency in select­ing the AW139 for their SAR mis­sions. The AW139 is the best sell­ing medi­um twin-engine heli­copter in the world. To date, almost 440 orders for this heli­copter have been placed by near­ly 120 cus­tomers in more than 40 coun­tries for a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions includ­ing EMS/SAR, law enforce­ment, off­shore trans­port, VIP/corporate trans­port, fire fight­ing, util­i­ty and oth­er com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment roles. 

The state-of-the-art AW139 is designed with inher­ent mul­ti-role capa­bil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty of oper­a­tion. It offers unmatched per­for­mance and safe­ty lev­els as well as the largest cab­in in its class. Large slid­ing doors enable quick and easy access for fast rope activ­i­ties. With a max­i­mum cruise speed of 165 kts (306 km/h), a max­i­mum range of 573 nm (1061 km) and over 5 hours endurance, the AW139 heli­copter offers best-in-class mis­sion capa­bil­i­ty. Cut­ting-edge mis­sion-ded­i­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy and equip­ment and out­stand­ing per­for­mance fea­tures enable the AW139 to accom­plish the most demand­ing oper­a­tions in the harsh­est weath­er and envi­ron­men­tal conditions.

Source: AgustaWest­land