Mark Huber is an aviation industry veteran who has worked in the flight training, aircraft sales, aircraft component, and airport development businesses. He has flight time in more than 50 different and diverse aircraft, including helicopters, aerobatic aircraft, vintage warbirds, jet fighters, business jets and turboprops, and transport-category aircraft. He has jumped out of several of these—on purpose—with a parachute. His defense and aviation journalism has been published in a variety of national and international periodicals.

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Airbus Helicopters AS332L, EC225, H215, and H225 series

Mark Huber

An Airbus H225 today performed the first helicopter flight using 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at Airbus Helicopters’s headquarters in Marignane, France, with the unblended SAF burned in one of the helicopter's two Safran Makila 2 engines. This also marks the start of a flight campaign aiming to assess the impact of unblended SAF on the helicopter systems, with the goal of certifying use of SAF blends that exceed today’s 50 percent limit.

 


The flight campaign follows earlier unblended SAF bench tests performed by Safran Helicopter Engines at its Bordes plant. According to Airbus, the H225 test helicopter flew with an unblended SAF derived from used cooking oil&nbsp;provided by TotalEnergies, which offers a net 90 percent CO2 reduction compared to traditional Jet-A. Airbus Helicopters has launched a SAF user group dedicated to driving the use of biofuels in the rotary-wing community and also started using blended SAF for training and test flights at its French and German sites.

 


“While all Airbus helicopters are certified to fly with up to a 50 percent SAF blend, it is our company’s ambition to have its helicopters certified to fly with 100 percent SAF within the decade,” said Airbus Helicopters executive v-p for engineering and chief technical officer Stefan Thome.&nbsp;“Today’s flight is an important first step toward this goal.”

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News and issues relating to the aerospace industry that are related to the science, engineering and business of flight in space involving civil, industrial and military applications, and similar topics related to flight in the atmosphere of the Earth that are not covered more directly by other AINonline subject channels. In other words, both astronautical and aeronautical subjects, except for those aeronautical topics that are specifically covered elsewhere on this website.

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News and issues about aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), covering all segments of the aviation industry; and modifications for aircraft and engines. Subjects include product support of aircraft, engines and avionics, MRO company mergers, acquisitions, announcements and personnel, Airworthiness Directives, Supplemental Type Certificate approvals and other topics.

News and issues relating to business, corporate and private aviation, primarily regarding turbine-engine-powered airplanes and helicopters. Subjects include aircraft, engines, maintenance, operations, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security, and training.

In this article

AS332/EC225/H215/H225

Airbus Helicopters

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