ships ranging up to 6,000 pounds.Īt present, the company says, almost 50 per cent of the company's sales-including spare parts-are to commercial users, compared with 20 per cent in the 1960's. The company made 11,000 of the famous Huey and Huey Cobra gunships and attack vehicles. Textron's Bell Hellcopter, the world's largest builder of helicopters, produced 80 to 90 per cent of all those used in the war, according to a spokesman. Helicopters also carry business executives-of Mack Trucks, International Business Machines and United States Steel, among others-from the airports where the corporate jet fleets land to company plants in suburban areas.Īnd the whirlybirds have assumed anything from the elephant's old task of lifting felled logs from heavily forested areas to prospecting for minerals in the dense jungles of Brazil to patroldng traffic and building power fines, ski lifts, roads and railroads.īut the‐big bulge in business came with Vietnam. Recently they have also been used for minesweeping in the Suez Canal, and one was used ‐ in New York City last month to mount a one‐ton microwave antenna on the Gulf and Western Building for the first transmission of television signals across the country by satellite. In a fire in the high‐rise Andraus Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil in February, 1972, helicopters rescued 380 people, making over 125 landings within five hours. The epectacular nature of chopper‐flight is undeniable. That, it has been argued, depends on the job involved, but there is no question that operating costs have dropped, noise problems abated and maintenance woes eased on the machines, which range in cost from a modest $50,000 to $5‐million apiece. Officials at Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., subsidiary at Sikorsky, and at Hughes Helicopters, a division of Howard Hughes's Summa Corporation, claim that the helicopter has become cost‐effective. In the North Sea alone, it is estimated, choppers make 10,000 trips a week to platforms up to 250 miles offshore. These days it is Pound more often flying through rough weather to offshore oil rigs from the North Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, transporting men and equipment and the whole rig (in sections) to different locations. Originally a costly, difficult to maintain machine, with a disconcerting tendency to drop like a stone if anything went wrong, the helicopter came of age as a military vehicle in the Korean War in the early 1950's and then, of course, in Vietnam. The vertical lift machine, developed in concept by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th Century, was first raised inches off the ground in 1939 by Igor I. Since 1961, the number of helicopters in commercial use in North America has jumped from 1,200 to more than 4,000, a rate of growth that is reflected worldwide, according to Gerald J. Of the 828 choppers produced, last year, half were exported around the world. Unit volume, meanwhile, was up only 7.5 per cent in 1974, reflecting increasing demand for more sophisticated equipment, especially in the oil business. Major companles predict another 25 per cent climb in dollar volume this year. That total was more than triple the $49‐million of commercial sales in 1970. Last year American sales of helicopters for commercial use increased by more than 50 per cent, to $189‐million, according to the Aerospate Industries Association of America. In short, after 1980 will there be enough business to keep all of the present compares gong? In preparation for next year's budget, the Pentagon has become specifically concerned about what will happer after the fulfillment of several big military development projects that are now underway.
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