Bell Courts BA609 Buyers By Using the XV-15

Log onto www.bellhelicopter.textron.com and what you see is not a helicopter but a fixed-wing, tiltrotor airplane. Soon Bell Helicopter Textron's BA609, the world's first commercial tiltrotor aircraft, will be a reality, with first flight of the nine-seater slated for mid-2001, and certification and sales to commence in late 2003 or early 2004.

The Model 609 has the BA designation because the vertical-lift, doesn't-need-a-runway aircraft is being built by a joint venture of Bell and Italy's Agusta. Designer Bell holds 60% and is responsible for all of the aircraft's dynamics. Japan's Fuji Heavy Industries is building the BA609 fuselage, and there will be final assembly in both Texas and Italy.

Think you might want an aircraft that doesn't need an airport? "Get in line," says Bell executive marketing director Don Barbour. Orders, including a new call for a pair of BA609s by Pittsburgh's Stat MedEvac for EMS, now exceed 80.

Price? Well, the first 77 civil tiltrotors were sold at a figure said to be "between $8 million and $10 million"-in 1996 dollars. Now Bell is saying only that firm pricing will be disclosed 18 months prior to aircraft delivery. The cost of a delivery position is $150,000, a deposit that's fully refundable-without interest.

Worse-or better for Bell-"The business backlog we have now will take us into the 2005-06 timeframe," Barbour says. It'll thus take at least five years for new buyers to get their BA609.

"The customers realized that was really a terrific deal," Bell chairman and CEO Terry Stinson says of the initial 77 orders. Now, "We continue to sell 609s unpriced with full deposits," Stinson says.

"The capability of the aircraft is greatly sought," Barbour understates.

That capability includes fully pressurized cabin, 25,000-foot flight ceiling, maximum cruise speed of 275 knots and range of 750 nmi. That's about twice the speed and twice the range of a comparably sized helicopter. Bell expects those attributes to make the BA609 more attractive than its rotary-wing products to fractional operators, who according to Stinson have expressed serious interest in the radical new aircraft.

Recent milestones for the BA609 include completion of bird strike tests on wing and tail, and icing tests on a one-fifth scale model. Pratt & Whitney Canada is supplying PT6 engines and Rockwell Collins the BA609's IFR avionics suite.

"We're real happy with Pratt, we're real happy with Collins," Barbour says. "The aircraft's coming together."

The first BA609 is being built at Bell's Plant 6 in Fort Worth.

To help sell it, Bell is taking prospective customers (including representatives of the big fractional operators) aloft in the XV-15 tiltrotor. To help sustain momentum, the Textron board has just approved money for a new BA609 training and delivery center at the Bell Agusta joint venture headquarters at the Fort Worth Alliance Airport. The facility will include a Level D simulator.

FlightSafety International is likely to supply the simulator hardware, but Bell itself will supply all of the tiltrotor training curricula.

What with the XV-15 and the production V-22 tiltrotor for the U.S. military, "We are the resident expert on the planet for that technology," Barbour says.

The Bell marketing chief predicts a spate of multiple orders for the BA609 for roles ranging from VIP transport to EMS to SAR. "We're beginning to see some global interest from civil governments," he says, warning other prospective customers, "As those quantity purchasers start to queue, it'll be very difficult to get in."

"If you want to be ahead of those," he advises, "You need to have a deposit in now." In other words-Get in line.

By Rich Piellisch