Good evening PPRUNErs! this is my first ever post on this forum. I served in the Army 96-2000 and am an aviation enthusiast. I like helicopters, looking at them and thinking about them. Kudos to Boeing and Leonardo for the work on the game-changing/new-class-creating (Super Medium) AW139! Yeah I was hoping the Bell (I love Hueys and UH-1s, Bell 412 etc) would have placed the UH-1Y into the game, but it wasn't to be. The advantage of the Aw139 over the competition (the two companies offering UH-60 types) that I see is that the 139 has a portion of the fuselage dedicated to storage, the UH-60 does not. Supplies can be stowed and not take up seating space. The AW139 is a game changer for sure. Of course, Bell did have a super medium four decades ago - the Bell 214ST - which has a similar layout (size, seating, detached cargo compartment) but ended production and never revisited that airframe size again... until now, the Bell 525. However the Bell 525 is about 10 years late to the super medium/Oil & Gas game!
Go Boeing and Leo for their success.