After a few lean years in deliveries, Enstrom Helicopter saw improvements in 2018 and expects to remain on a better footing. According to General Aviation Manufacturers Association shipment data, Enstrom (Booth B2624) shipped 14 helicopters through the third quarter of 2018, a significant jump from the five it shipped in the same period in 2017, as well as the 10 in 2016 and six in 2015.

“2018 was a good year for Enstrom as we worked through a couple of large military training helicopter orders,” Dennis Martin, Enstrom's director of sales and marketing, told AIN. “One of those will carry into 2019, and we have signed another fleet order that will deliver in 2019 as well. Combined with other sales, we are looking at a similar number of overall deliveries.”

In the past few years, Martin said military flight training has been a primary market for the Menominee, Michigan-based manufacturer of the piston F-28F and 280FX, along with the turbine 480B. “However, we continue to see good sales opportunities in the police, commercial, and private owner markets, and we’ll be stepping up our efforts in those markets in 2019 as we believe there is room for growth there,” Martin said.

Enstrom’s recent sales haven’t been concentrated in specific geographic areas. North America is underperforming but the company is more positive on Europe, Martin said. “That market had been stagnant for a while, and it’s nice to see that region responding to some of the updates we’ve done to the aircraft and our marketing,” he said.

The year promises additional delivery opportunities for Enstrom in areas such as in Thailand, where it expects to deliver six 480B training helicopters, and in France, where it will deliver a 280FX to a flight school there, he said. “It’s our first new aircraft in France in a number of years and it’s already creating some buzz in a region that’s hungry for an alternative to their existing fleet of trainers,” Martin said. “We have a few other programs that we are working on that we hope to be able to announce in 2019.”

The company was founded in 1957 by Rudy Enstrom and over the years has had multiple owners including Purex, trial attorney F. Lee Bailey, and inventor Dean Kamen. Its current owner, Chongqing (China) Helicopter Investment, acquired the Enstrom in late 2012 and a few months later announced a major expansion to its factory, bringing the size to 173,000 sq ft. Martin said that doesn’t include a separate R&D facility and storage hangar. It currently employs 130 people, down from a high of more than 200 in 2014.

A year after announcing the factory expansion, the company also unveiled a new helicopter, the TH180 Trainer, which Martin said Enstrom “firmly believes there is a need in the market for.” But the helicopter—which had an emergency hard landing during testing in February 2016—is nearly four years past its original targeted type certification date.

Martin said the TH180 continues to undergo certification testing but didn’t offer an anticipated certification date. “It is sharing time in our engineering schedule with some other important projects, so that is slowing the progress a little bit,” he said. “In the meantime, we are taking the opportunity to bring some of the new features developed on the TH180 over to the existing 280FX line, and we’ll be introducing a few of those at HAI 2019.”

In some ways the 280FX fills the need for a training helicopter that is well-supported by its OEM and has low operating costs, Martin said. But not everyone needs the capabilities the 280FX offers, such as in areas that are hot and high. “The TH180 was designed for operators that didn’t necessarily need that boosted performance,” Martin said.