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The best part of an interview of Bruno about the G2 in the US by Vertical Mag :
This year will mark the second appearance for the Hélicoptères Guimbal Cabri G2 at a Heli-Expo, but its first since gaining certification from the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The aircraft completed the 16-month certification process in February 2015, paving the way for its launch U.S. customer — Newberg, Ore.-based Precision Helicopters — to put the aircraft into full training operations at its flight school.
A successful debut at Heli-Expo in Anaheim, Calif., last year saw Guimbal, based in Aix-en-Provence, France, record 10 orders for the two-seater piston training aircraft from U.S. customers, and the first two of those have already been delivered.
While the aircraft has proved popular around the world since it gained its first regulatory type certificate from the European Aviation Safety Agency in 2007, Guimbal wanted to wait until the time was right to make the move into the U.S.
To begin with, the manufacturer found the sheer scale of the world’s largest civil helicopter market — and the high costs involved in entering it — were prohibitive to a company of its size and experience. But as the popularity and reputation of the Cabri G2 grew, Guimbal began to receive more and more enquiries about the possibility of bringing the aircraft to the U.S.
The manufacturer was looking for something very specific in its customers as it considered taking the Cabri G2 across the Atlantic. It wanted operators that were a training organization and an experienced FAA part 145 repair organization, and they needed to be prepared to order at least two helicopters.
These requirements, said Guimbal, were “because we can’t afford to have a small problem with a sensor or a wire destroying the image of the helicopter, simply because the maintenance specialist is 500 kilometers away.”
“The Cabri being introduced to the United States is going to be really a godsend for many of the training companies, because it’s a new technology, [and] it has very low maintenance costs — with a structure we hope will be very economically beneficial. There are only three components that are ‘time life’ on the aircraft, and then everything else is an ‘on condition’ component. . . It allows us to be proactive in a lot of our maintenance, and be good stewards of the aircraft — and then it’ll reward us in what we see in maintenance costs.”
Bruno Guimbal, the aircraft’s designer and the CEO and president of Hélicoptères Guimbal, said that while the aircraft was being used for a variety of utility roles in around the world, about 70 percent of the sales were for training.
“The market for two-seaters will always be based on training, because it’s a big market, and it’s the best helicopter for training,” he told Vertical Show News. “I designed the Cabri to be the best trainer that you could imagine. . . . [Its] qualities are particularly attractive for the training market.”
“We were very surprised and very pleased with the amount of interest we captured during Heli-Expo last year,” said Guimbal. “We had absolutely no plans to sign any orders — we brought with us no order papers — and then we ended up signing 10 orders on blank pieces of paper with people that we did not know about the day before. Then we started to realize completely that the U.S. market is something different because people are very dynamic and they’re in pretty good shape at the moment.”
Tailor-Made Trainer | Vertical Magazine - The Pulse of the Helicopter Industry
This year, he should have "few" order papers ready !
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