Nigerian S-92a
 

Heard a racket overhead London, looked up and saw a Bristows S-92a. On checking the somewhat rare bird, it transpires that it was a Nigerian registered example, 5N-BTI. No doubt coming 'home' for a check up/re-purposing of some kind. I'm curious, did it ferry all the way back from Nigeria, or piggy-back on a ship ?


SHJ

Clattered over my office heading north. FR24 useful for i/d on these occasions!


Edit: Looks like it stopped in at Redhill, do Bristows still have a presence there?

A day for slightly more interesting helicopters than the usual sarf London rotary traffic... Had an Irish Air Corps AB-139 scuttle past an hour or two back, some way to the south (following the M25) but visible thanks to the lovely clear air we briefly enjoying.

Irish Air Corps 274 visited Blackbushe today too.

Probably the one, I noticed it on ADS-B Exchange heading eastbound somewhere between Guildford and Leatherhead must have been about 1pm or so.

It's been flown back from Nigeria and is heading for Aberdeen to help out with the grounding of the Puma fleet, it was heading to Humberside today.

Edit : Has arrived at Aberdeen.

It was indeed very busy today in and around London as far as rotary traffic was concerned. I'm advised that the military stuff is in conjunction with some war games taking place in the West Country at the moment.

That's a pretty long flight for the ferrying of the S92, approx 6000km-ish ? What would be the daily mileage ? For that matter what was their likely route, bearing in mind that there are some inhospitable territories between Port Harcourt and Europe ?


SHJ

There was a squadron of Cirrus SR22s flown out to Saudi Arabia last year, as with the S-92 ferry flight above I'm still bemused as to why. Surely cheaper to hire an Il-76 and do it in one hop?