welcome back to vertigon in Dallas here with Johnny Johnny Mack John mcder mder helicopters we're here to talk about this Beast um the uh Bell 214 ST which if you look up as a shanuk driver I have never seen blades bigger than my old helicopter but this thing is something to behold Johnny tell us about the 214 and and why the 214 for your company Okay so we've always been Bell operators uh predominantly and um we start off with the 214 BS back in 2002 um and uh we've just developed from there um we got an opportunity to buy two foot nsts and we loved them but at the time we didn't have uh the volume of work the demand just wasn't there yeah so uh um by building up our 214 uh B Fleet led to a demand for a twin engine variant of the 214 so the 2ot NST was the obvious choice so um we bought all of Erics and stock of 214 STS and everything to do with 214s and um we've uh decided to uh expand by developing the fire tank along with helac for the 24st high skid gear and now um the demand for the aircrafts out uh outweighing the supply of aircraft I say they're quite a rare bird aren't they well they've been rare yeah they've become rare but um so we we now own the 24 um type certificate data sheet so for the B model and the St so technically now this is actually a McDermot 214 so like ericon now own the sky crane this is now mcdermut 24 yeah yeah so um the the market we're in is the 2 and 1/2 to 3 and 1/2 ton market so 25,000 3,500 L but our advantage is as we can carry passengers yeah your standard certificate yeah so we're a a transport category certificate um so it'll do everything that uh we need it to do plus it plus carry passengers and uh we uh we've decided that uh we'll go into production with them really yeah so we're working with the company that previously made the Yankee model for Bell um and uh we're well underway with uh getting that going when do you expect the first aircraft to roll out from the First new build so the First new data plate should come out in 2026 late 26 or early 27 it will be fitted out with um existing running gear so it'll be a new cabin new tole boom new engines but it'll have overhauled uh components on it and that's just just purely a supply chain thing to catch up all the production that's going so we're making it uh that we're making simple utility helicopters there's we don't want these to be flying out to oil rigs in all sorts of weather there to do uh firefighting um search and rescue for sure um winching we're actually working uh winching in grease at the moment um in the utility r and uh yeah I mean they're effective there were Bell Helicopter Bell helicopters are easy to keep operating very reliable um one of one of the selling points of these is that uh you can take your components to any mro any maintenance repair organization get them overhauled so we don't we're not the people who buy these aircraft offers are not going to be OEM Reliant for overhauls and what have you in lead times and uh you know the the the reliability last year we did 4,460 hours in 120 days wow and we got 98.6% um show that puts lot more than aircraft a shame that percentage doesn't it oh absolutely I I don't think any any other aircraft would have been able to be that reliable in the environment we working we were scooping salt water yeah so you know we've got a very stringent um protocol for for decontamination and that but it's hard work and these aircraft are flying 10hour days day in day out proper workhorses yep so you're looking at changing any of the avionics spe of the aircraft you going to put a digital cockpit in or you going to keep Legacy steaming there no no no we're we're um we're in 2025 so it's time to throw out the old um we've got a a glass cockpit uh set up there a it's actually a working uh model in the back so it's Genesis uh avionics um there'll be fadec uh ge engines in it um we've skinny the aircraft down as I say we've taken it from a 165 knot aircraft and we're actually uh lowering the v& because um basically our firefighting configuration drag yeah we just 120 130 knots is plenty for us yeah that's still quicker than an s61 and comfortably and it reduces the fatigue on the aircraft so um yeah so we've got uh some upgrades we've done we've got a uh we're working on finalizing our 1,000 lb uh external load increase so um yeah quite a quite a bit of new stuff going in it but still the reliability of bell and it can still be repaired by 99% of the mechanics that are ridable and and you seeing sort of global demand for this aircraft as you put it back into production absolutely the reason we're gone back into production is because there's a demand for this type of aircraft nobody you you know tell me who's building a utility helicopter these days a real utility helicopter you know I mean uh a lot of the Europeans make very pretty helicopters but they're not particularly robust for the environment that we're working in lots of plastic lots of Composites lots of and lots of cost yeah yeah and uh you know we just want our aircraft to be reliable to be uh user friendly and affordable to keep going um and uh yeah I suppose that's what's sort of driven us into this aircraft well very much look forward to seeing the the output I'm very much look forward to seeing the first aircraft new build come off the line and seeing it Fly sometime hope in the next 18 months so absolutely pleasure talking to you thank you very much indeed no wor cheers thanks for everything