Company Looks to New FH1100 Deliveries in 2008

FH1100 Manufacturing Corp. is looking to deliver its first newly made FH1100 turbine helicopter to a customer in 2008. Georges Van Nevel, president and CEO of the Century, Fla.-based company that bought the FH1100 type certificate in 1999, told Rotor & Wing he focused first on spooling up support for the existing FH1100 fleet. “It was a long process to reorganize a company dormant so long.” He started remanufacturing existing aircraft in 2004. Now his 22 employees have been working on certifying upgrades to the old Fairchild Hiller design and have several new aircraft in production, he said. The company also runs an adjacent flight school, which Van Nevel said this year graduated its first class of FH1100-trained certificated flight instructors and commercial pilots. The school is running just one class at a time, of about eight students each.   For related news