Originally Posted by
FH1100 Pilot
Heh. Considering that Bell initiated the tilt-rotor idea and concept in 1957, they must have felt proprietary of it. For them to get rid of the program in 2011 was immensely revealing. We can imagine that John L. Garrison (Bell's President and CEO at the time) must have had to stand up and (sheepishly) admit to the Board of Directors that they would probably never be able to make the 609 work, and even if they did, they would never, ever, ever recoup the development costs because the market simply doesn't exist and probably never will. So they sold it off to the Italians and said good luck. Then they issued the usual BS press release about how they want to focus on the V-22 and future tilt-rotor designs (Valor, I guess) blah blah blah. It's funny - There's a story on the HeliHub website in June of 2011 has the headline: "Finmeccanica sees 500 BA609 choppers sold by 2013." By 2013?? HAHAHAHAHAHAH! (Finmeccanica being the parent company of Agusta-Westland at the time.)
You wont hear me argue in defense of anything with regards to eVTOL - its the most modern snake oil pitch going, and Adam's nonsensical public musings make Elizabeth Holmes look like quantum physicist. That being said, they are all a
far cry from a legitimate practical large-diameter, low-disc-loading, flapping, conventional tiltrotor (a configuration which wins every single eVTOL trade on technical merits, but loses on market perception and the ability for neophyte aerospace startups to design and build a working non-rigid, flapping tiltrotor rotor).
Technically speaking, there's really no issue with a commercial tiltrotor other than the massive expense of certifying the first type, and the economics of making it profitable. The 609 point design was horrible in both these aspects (in addition to the previously mentioned poor design decisions), hence Bell selling the program - not because of some acknowledgement that "tiltrotors don't work".
Just like ABC rigid rotor aircraft, the economics of higher speed and cruise provided by tiltrotors are really not the driving factor for most existing vertical lift operators, so you would be hard pressed to get a foothold in the market especially without prior investment in the infrastructure to make them financially appealing from the outset.