£579m Contract for Yeovil

[Earl of Rochester]

Helicopter manufacturer AgustaWestland awarded £570m contract by the Ministry of Defence (MoD)

The Yeovil-based firm's five-year contract is to support and maintain 70 Westland-built Merlin helicopters, operated by the RAF and Royal Navy.
The town's Lib Dem MP David Laws said the order would safeguard up to 1,000 jobs, most of them in Somerset and at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall.
He said it was "excellent news" for the town and the armed forces.

He added: "This contract will ensure that the Merlin helicopters continue to be well supported in their deployments - both within Afghanistan and on other operations throughout the world.

"The jobs secured with this contract will also be hugely beneficial to our local economy - as much of the work on these helicopters will be assigned to Westland's factory in Yeovil."

BBC News - Yeovil-based AgustaWestland given £570m MoD deal (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-12216864)

[Tallsar]

Nothing new here...just some good spin doctoring by HMG etc....its the 5 year renewal of the 25 year Merlin IOS contract. Hard to know where else they would go if AWL failed to perform. Gives a loose average cost per airframe to keep them ready to fly over the next five year period though....

570 / 70 / 5 = £1.65M per aircraft per annum for rear major/minor servicing and spares -cheap at that price I hear all say!:)

[Hilife]

And this assumes that all 70 are fit-for-purpose in the next 5-years, but simply not the case.

I’d suggest 25% to 30% of Mk1’s hangared permanently and then there is the upgrade to MK2 standard - let alone the MK3 to MK4 upgrade, so many cabs out of service for quite some time (these costs are separate), so how much per flight hour will it be costing the taxpayer. I hear figures of £7,000 to £8,000 per flight hour from credible sources, that’s twice that of the Chinook and still only 60% availability at best.

Jobs for the boyz and soon back in office, oh Mr. Laws will be pleased.