Y'all of little faith,
I am very disappointed, while generally progressive (as any pilot ought to be) I feel like this thread is populated by a bunch of old and fat "big ship table" pilots (FH1100 knows who those were).
The fact that Bell was pulling out of the 609 was clear when they hired Nick Lappos, but Bell is also a company that has not been able to introduce a single winning product for the last generations of helicopters, of any size, and it's still looking for the Holy Grail (TM).
Name the last Bell helicopter product that has sold and actually produced more than 150 airframes in the last 15 years.
427, 430, 417, 210, ARH, LUH all these are failures by the number produced if compared by the years in service, not to mention their complete performance debacle AS A CORPORATE STRUCTURE in the LUH competition and their soon to be EX-ARH.
My bet is that whichever bright and motivated Bell engineer is still working on the 609 shall jump ship and get well rewarded by AW.
AW has already shifted their target to the parapublic/military crowd with much deeper pockets than the civilian market, Mr. Orsi has "unveiled" a SAR variant that in his words shall be very attractive for SAR/patrol work.
As far as entering the upper airway/IFR system from any point other than an airport, we ought to consider that 99% of departure arrival are generated from a restricted number of locations called AIRPORTS and that the initial time separation/routing plays a big role in the delays.
The helipads at the hospital we operated from had four letters locations assigned and were part of the NAS structure, apart from Ops Specs and GOM policies not allowing us take off in IFR conditions, we never experienced any significant delay even in those times of peak traffic.
Bob, a 609 landing at a Manhattan heliport? It's politics and the one with the deepest pockets win.
A 609 landing on a drilling rig with 206s and 350s scattered around? Policies in the Gulf of Mexico have changed considerably since you left and the trend is going to separate the chaff from the wheat, those 206s are a dying breed and most helicopters now have more than two blades.
Bell separating themselves from the 139 was not only a bad decision but in my opinion it costed this airframe the selection for the LUH, and that particular decision started a very marked trend of BAD corporate decisions.
Need to know why Bell's customer support is the best? Because they have to, in reason to keep after nothing but a fleet of older airframes with scant performance.
In the end ladies, can anyone of y'all disprove the performance figures reached so far by the 609?